Here is a chapter of "The continuity of the cultural field" that addresses the origins of the night and day difference between the civilizations of the West and of China.
2.2.4. shared worldviews stabilized early power societies
The following graph sketches the evolution of human worldviews since their origins till today and how these were shaped by the most ground breaking changes in the climate context (2nd graph) humans had to live through which inevitably fostered the evolution of the form of their societies
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Evolution of human worldviews. Image by laodan (click to increase size)
Source : Global temperature record (modified by laodan)
The following is the part of the first graph that addresses the transition from tribal-societies to power-societies :
1. Transition upper 1, 2, 3 = transition in the Tri-Continental-Area (TCA) :
- first phase of the transition :
Around 11,700 YA an abrupt climate warming, at the tail-end of the Younger Dryas, boosted the available resources in the alluvial plains. Populations grew and the fission-fusion tribal model of population control expanded the occupied territory but choke-points soon appeared.
This narrow territory was rapidly filling and newly created tribal groups were pushed back outside of the alluvial plains ever higher in the mountains of the North. The monumental constructions of Göbekli Tepe date from that time and give us an idea of the cultural and societal complexity that had already been attained by tribal societies at the time ... - second phase of transition :
Around 10,000 YA the tribal fission-fusion model of population control had expanded the tribal population over the entirety of the alluvial plains of Mesopotamia (Tigris and Euphrates). The groups of individuals who were ‘ejected’ from their tribes due to tribal fission could no longer fuse in a new tribal group and by necessity they eventually assembled in villages where they experimented agricultural methods while still living according to the tribal culture and its non-power mode of governance. - third phase of the transition :
By 8,000 YA the fight for resources between villages, and between villages and tribal groups, to feed ever larger populations had reached a breaking point. Some strong men took control over their village by force. Soon thereafter they conquered neighboring villages. But still stronger men took over the power from them.
This game of taking and losing power lasted some 2,000-3,000 years. Between 5,000 and 6,000 YA some chieftains, in the Southern Mesopotamian plain, started to associate with local men of knowledge in order to glue the individuals around a common worldview. This stabilized the reproduction of the institutions of Sumerian villages that grew into the larger city-states of Eridu, Bad-tibira, Larsa, Sippar, Shuruppak, Uruk, Kish, Ur, and so on. The king of the strongest of these city-states then eventually consolidated the power of these cities into a confederation whose institutional reproduction is remembered as the civilization of Sumer.
2. Transition lower 1, 2, 3 = transition on the territory of present day China :
Western European historians and archaeologists working in the TCA, since the 19th century, theorized basically ‒ that the dynastic transmission of power was confirmed when the institutions of power had succeeded to reproduce over the long haul of multiple generations ‒ that the dynastic transmission of power launched the establishment of a power society in the form of a kingdom or an empire ‒ that the dynastic transmission of power signaled the emergence of a civilization.
Western historians were the authors of this historical marking and their theories have been blindly accepted by everyone around the whole world. Following this Western historical attribution an imperial era would have arisen just over 4000 years ago in China signaling the emergence of the Chinese civilization. But does such a marking make any sense in the specific context of China ?
I personally dispute this historical marking because it does in no way fit China’s particular context of power formation :
The TCA competition among men of power resulted in the rejection of anything that relates to tribal societies and so the narratives called upon to glue the minds of their subjects, had inevitably to be steeped in a new ideation. Since Sumer, but most probably a lot earlier, the thinking of the (wo)men of knowledge had indeed totally separated from the idea of abating the individuals’ suffering. The thinking was thus steeped in narratives that were totally detached from the production of daily life.
- first phase of transition :
The effects of the Younger dryas in East-Asia have accrued few studies. Other than a delayed onset, of the warming by some 200-300 years, it seems that roughly the same effects were observed as in the TCA. Populations grew but, in contrast to the TCA, there was no interruption of the tribal territorial expansion during the 2nd phase of transition - second phase of transition :
While the entirety of the alluvial plains of the TCA were occupied around 10,000 YA. China’s alluvial plains are so large that the tribal fission-fusion model of population control continued to expand tribal territorial occupation without hindrance.
Archaeological discoveries indicate that the practice of tribal cultural unification started sometime around 10,000 YA with the Nanzhuangtou Culture located South of present-day Beijing (1). This was a purely tribal phenomenon. There were still no villages at the time but excavations indicate that millet was nevertheless in use. Some see this as a sign that agriculture had emerged but this is a premature affirmation for the good reason that, as I write in “2.2.3.2. Agriculture” (2):
“It was not as if tribesmen did not know about seeding and planting. Women who, for tens of thousands of years, had been gathering seeds, nuts, ‘vegetables’ or roots had been helping themselves by gradually concentrating the spread of each gathered species in given locations. The principles of agriculture were thus known since long before villages gradually started to dominated the local scene. But their application remained marginal.
What I mean to say here is that agriculture and village life started as a necessity once a territorial plain could no longer accommodate the expansion of tribal population growth. Seen, that tribal women “had been helping themselves by gradually concentrating the spread of each gathered species in given locations”, pushing these practices a little further was not such a radical feat after all. And so a question arises. Can archaeologists distinguish between grains gathered from such “tribal concentration” from “village agriculture”? "
- third phase of transition :
The first villages emerged sometime between 7,000 and 6,000 YA not uniformly in all alluvial plains but in some limited locations. Note that this is a few thousand years later than in the TCA. And archaeological discoveries indicate that village culture participated in the same model of the existing tribal cultural unification.
Excavations show first signs of social stratification appearing in the villages around 6,000 YA. Families differentiated by the quantity and richness of the artifacts left in their graves which implies that inequality started to shape social relations which could eventually also imply early manifestations of power relations (3).
Large cities start to emerge around 5,500 YA. The first known to this day, “ShuangHuaiShu (4)”, is an urban settlement outside of Zhengzhou-Henan that dates back to 5,300 YA. It is well known that the reproduction of institutions of power gives rise to cities by assembling the agents of power in a centralized area.
From the era of symbolic cultural unity, to early forms of governance, the power of the leader was attributed identically by designation of the wisest among all (wo)men of knowledge. But paradoxically the practice of designating a sage consecrated the triumph of patriarchy over the traditional matriarchy. And this process of designating the wisest to lead the group radically changed one step further when the sage decided to transmit his power to his son. This was when a first dynasty of sages, the Xia Dynasty, took root some 4,200 YA.
Western European historians and archaeologists working in the TCA, since the 19th century, theorized basically ‒ that the dynastic transmission of power was confirmed when the institutions of power had succeeded to reproduce over the long haul of multiple generations ‒ that the dynastic transmission of power launched the establishment of a power society in the form of a kingdom or an empire ‒ that the dynastic transmission of power signaled the emergence of a civilization.
Western historians were the authors of this historical marking and their theories have been blindly accepted by everyone around the whole world. Following this Western historical attribution an imperial era would have arisen just over 4000 years ago in China signaling the emergence of the Chinese civilization. But does such a marking make any sense in the specific context of China ?
I personally dispute this historical marking because it does in no way fit China’s particular context of power formation :
- For one the governance system of the Xia was the fact of the animist men of knowledge. The wisest among them being at the helm of a council of (wo)men of knowledge. This contrasts sharply with the history of the TCA where an empire was governed by the men of power. Calling the Xia dynasty an empire is thus not semantically correct in my view.
- Secondly the transition, from tribal societies to power societies in China, followed the path of a cultural unification by the animist (wo)men of knowledge who designated the wisest among them to symbolize the cultural unity of the trinity given by : ‒ one people ‒ one territory ‒ one governance system. This fostered the continuity of animism which ensured the continuous reproduction of the tribal cultural field.
- One and two contrast sharply with the transition in the TCA which was the fact of a competition among men of power for the control of villages and the expulsion of tribes from the alluvial plains. Their competition abated only after newly formed ideological worldviews were shared by all their citizens which helped to reproduce their institutions of power over the long haul of multiple generations. Such divergent paths between the TCA and China naturally produced radically different models of societal organization.
The TCA competition among men of power resulted in the rejection of anything that relates to tribal societies and so the narratives called upon to glue the minds of their subjects, had inevitably to be steeped in a new ideation. Since Sumer, but most probably a lot earlier, the thinking of the (wo)men of knowledge had indeed totally separated from the idea of abating the individuals’ suffering. The thinking was thus steeped in narratives that were totally detached from the production of daily life.
In conclusion ‒ East-Asia operated a cultural unification along the lines of a continuation of animism that later got synchronized with the contextual changes that took place in the human habitat (villages, cities, agriculture, leadership, …) ‒ the TCA assisted at violent grabs on power along the lines of a rupture with animism that got replaced with stories totally detached from peoples’ production of their daily lives.
This radical differentiation in the process of transition from tribal societies to power societies gave way to 2 radically different models of historical change or transformation ‒ continuity in China ‒ rupture in the West that inherited the TCA model. And these 2 models of historical transformation supplied their civilizations with 2 opposite conceptual frames of reference which I call “axioms of civilization”. Here follows a sketch of this historical development :
transition from tribal societies to power societies. Image by laodan
And here is how I sketched the 2 sets of opposite axioms (5) that resulted from this historical development :
The “axioms of civilization”. Image by laodan
These conceptual opposites signal that we face two irreconcilable understandings about how reality operates. And so the categories that are used to explain one are not applicable to explain the other. In other words using Western European historians’ markings of power and civilization in the TCA and applying these markings to China’s history is ludicrous. But proposing a better vision, that fits the facts, is a subject that is too large for the present volume. I’ll address this question in “Volume 2 : Societal evolution and governance”.
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Notes
3. “Longshan
area urbanism : the role of cities in pre-dynastic China” by
Paola Damattè
4. “5,300-year-old city ruins discovered in central China” in Archeology News Network. 2020-05-12
5. In “What is going on ? 2.4.2. Axioms of civilizations and worldviews force theshape of daily culture”
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