3.1.3. The growth of village population fostered ever more recourse to force
Ultimately free tribesmen did not rush to adopt agriculture. It was not as if this new technology was adopted after having been perceived to offer the paradise on earth. The rise of agriculture was imposed as an answer to an existential threat. Three factors combined that imposed its rise :
- The first stage :
Villages emerged because there was no land any longer for new group formation by excess tribal population. In other words the fusion aspect of the demographic fission-fusion model of population control was not functioning any longer.
Tribes continued to reproduce the tribal mode of organization but their excess population was suddenly forced to accept concentrating in small spaces on the margins of the tribal territories in order to survive.
There they were forced to put in application an old taboo. As I mentioned earlier the knowledge of the agricultural principles were known since tens of thousands of years already but it was considered taboo to put them in application. Forced by the circumstances villagers started tilling the land and domesticating animals while their shared beliefs and their mode of organization remained tribal.
This first stage lasted some 1,500 to 2,000 years roughly between 10,500-10,000 and 9,000-8,500 Before Present (BP). And according to the picture revealed by archaeological digs it was a peaceful time. - The second stage :
Due to the continuous flow of tribal excess population villages were pressured to expand their territory at the detriment of tribes. This growing tension put, the most capable to fight, in charge of organizing the village expansion. In normal tribal times this had always been a temporary practice that was interrupted once the occurrence demanding organization had passed. The most capable then simply returned to their status as equal with their fellow tribesmen. But with this village expansion into tribal territory things turned out differently. This was not a one time operation. Territorial expansion lasted not far from 1,000 years and, in the normality established by longer time series, some strongmen sized upon the opportunity and tried to impose the continuity of their power over their village.
Tribal excess population continued to flow to villages for many generations and the resulting increase in population forced villages to expand their territory ever further while the tension continued to grow with their neighboring tribes. Amidst this growing tension some chieftains annexed other villages and, while disposing of more hands, they waged war against neighboring tribes and stole ever more of their lands.
This fight left tribes at a disadvantage. Their culture and habits were rooted in peaceful coexistence with their neighboring tribes. Village culture in the meantime had festered power relations, rising social inequality, and the use of brute force. As a result of village male aggression tribal populations were forced to flee on the margins of their territories outside of the alluvial plains.
Under the guise of force and punishments the chieftains collected the resources needed by their families from their fellow-villagers. But villagers were tribesmen who had been free for tens of thousands of years and so they strongly resisted any attempt by the men of power to collect from them. In such a context power did not succeed to reproduce institutions …
This second stage saw the victory of the villages over the tribes which were ejected from the alluvial plains. This stage lasted between 9,500-9,000 and 8,500-8,000 BP approximately. - The third stage :
This was a time of trials and errors, in term of the reproduction of the institutions and organization of power over many generations, that lasted some 3,000 years roughly between 8.500-8,000 and 5,500-5,000 BP approximately.
Chieftains were competing among themselves for the control of villages. Assembling villages, or absorbing the population of neighboring villages, increased the population levels and specialized activities were in the ascent like ceramic producers, jewelry producers, heads of sects and their servants, tax administrators, force administrators, and archivists in charge of keeping facts in memory.
This is when cities emerged and also when the written language arose as a necessity to keep track of the community’s memory in its application of the new rules and the imposition of resource collection from the citizenry for the benefit of the men of power. - The 4th stage :
This is when we assist at the conclusion of the past 3 stages with the successive reproduction of the institutions of power and of a worldview over the generations.
This is the moment when civilizations begin to spread over a territorial realm. This starts at different times for different power societies between 5,500-5,000 and 4,000 years ago. Civilizations emerged over the whole world in the alluvial plains of river valleys : the Nile Valley, the Fertile Crescent and its Mesopotamian Valleys, the Zayandeh and Ganj Dareh Valleys, the Indus Valley, the Yellow and Yangtze river Valleys, and so on...
There is no historical record about how peoples' daily lives changed. This is why this era is called prehistory. But substantial research has been undertaken in the last decades that gives us an idea about how agriculture changed the quality of peoples' lives. Numerous studies show indeed that populations relying on agriculture saw their health
deteriorate drastically and those populations only returned to pre-agricultural levels of health in late modem times. This is largely due to :
Agriculture provides an abundance of grains but from a very narrow range of plants, 4-5 species only (wheat, corn/maize, rice, barley,…), while the diet of tribal societies relied on nearly 100 different plants. This means that a tribal diet offered a more varied bio-chemical intake than an agriculture based diet. It was was fast apparent that farmers had mineral and other deficiencies that plagued them with chronic diseases.
The result was a crumbling life expectancy that decreased by roughly 20-50% while the height of individual farmers shrunk by some 15-25 cm (various studies conclude with different figures). The health impact, plus larger work loads, explain why people in many parts of the world remained hunter-gatherers until recently even if they had to live in largely inhospitable lands. They were aware of the existence and methods of agriculture but they were not interested to convert to it.
In other words the non-availability of free land eventually forced agriculture in the Fertile Crescent that put humanity on a path toward power societies. In China a tribal cultural unification, around the symbol of the wisest among (wo)mean of knowledge also called a sage, was accompanied by the localization of the retreats of the (wo)men of knowledge in the tribal area of the sage. In a sign of appreciation of her or his wisdom the (wo)men of knowledge of the neighboring tribes started indeed to congregating at the site of the wise.
Followers later flocked to this central area resulting in larger concentrations of population and the emergence of the first Chinese cities around 5,500 BP. In all probability the tribesmen, of the whole area of cultural unity, were also assembling around the sage during annuals feasts once a year in a kind of pilgrimage celebration of the cultural unity.
A question has been harassing the minds of researchers in human prehistory over the last few decades without them finding any satisfying answer. How in the world could free people have adopted agriculture while it was so evidently having such a negative outcome for their health and their longevity while also imposing so many more hours of work than tribal people ? As of today anthropologists have not found any good answer to that question. They are still unconsciously under the spell of the axioms of their civilization and they can't thus shake their blindness !
As I have illustrated here above it was necessity that forced excess tribal populations to assemble in villages and then to defy the taboo related to the application of known agricultural principles. It is my view that power then acted as the fundamental factor helping agriculture to spread over time. In a first stage the pressure on villages for new land got answered by brute force and in a second stage, when their territory had expanded further than what brute force can control, force got eventually seconded by the imposition of a worldview that transformed the men of power into earthly representatives of spirits who soon, under the pressure of individualism and rising greed, were transformed into the absoluteness of gods.
Viewed from this particular angle the adoption of agriculture, with all its negatives, finally starts to make sense. It also necessarily implies that 'power worldviews' were the ultimate tool that finally stabilized the first empires some 5000 years ago.
But how about the role of the men of knowledge amidst those changes ?
If we refer to surviving local groups still adhering to a form or another of animism, albeit far removed from the real thing as may be the case in remote areas of South America Africa or Asia, we can observe that the men of knowledge are still very influential in their communities but the group is nowhere seen to take care any longer about their personal material needs. After the emergence of power the exchange for their services was being contributed individually by the demander in the form of barter of goods for the personal service rendered by the man of knowledge.
But the fact is that, for most men of knowledge, this kind of 'remuneration' was no longer sufficient to ensure the satisfaction of their material needs and so they had suddenly to contribute themselves to the production of those goods (food, crafts,...). This is how the animist (wo)men of knowledge got relegated to the margins of their power societies.
From an artistic perspective what is important to note here is that the men of knowledge all along that phase of build-up of power societies have continued to fulfill their role as art creators. It is very unlikely that any specialization-professionalization of the function of image maker, musician or dancer took place in an early stage of power accumulation for the good reason that power remained very unstable changing hands very fast leaving thus no time for any form of institutionalization to take root.
The socioeconomic changes imposed by power societies eliminated the collective ownership over the accumulation of reserves and this must have put an end to the tribal feasts. In consequence the men of knowledge were now limited to share their visual signs, music and dance movements during public ceremonies that were financed by small individual contributions. The abundance of food and drinks at tribal feasts must have starkly contrasted, in peoples' eyes, with what was available in ceremonies under power societies. But those ceremonies nevertheless continued to inspire the citizens in the decoration patterns of their dwellings, ceramic cooking pots pans and woven textiles. There is nevertheless no possible doubt that the quality of their arts must have followed the same down curve as their material lives. Local popular arts remained strong all along this early phase of power institutions but they lost the aesthetic magic
After Millennia of trials and errors at conserving their power some early kingdoms succeeded to reproduce themselves over the span of generations and started to compete with other successful kingdoms thus furthering the game of expansion that ultimately led to empires.
The co-optation, by the men of power, of the men of knowledge to share a common worldview with their citizens was the major reason for the increase in societal cohesion that eventually smoothed the reproduction of imperial institutions. It is most probable that the game of power concentration was paralleled by vigorous philosophic debates among men of knowledge about the nature of reality and the working of society and that the men of power themselves were on the look-out for seductive narratives that included them in the picture.
By the time a king’s territorial conquests made him emperor the philosophic debates among men of knowledge had already frozen different packs of general ideas about the nature of reality and the working of society. So the men of power generally choose one set of such ideas, or were imposed such a set, and made it the obliged reference within the boundaries of their territory. The ideas that grounded the narratives, which succeeded to impose themselves as the narrative of the master worldview of an empire, I call the 'axioms of civilizations'.
The axioms of civilization were transmitted from generation to generation as non negotiable foundations of their civilizational house. And all present and future theories and philosophies were then laid on top of those axiomatic foundations like the bricks of the walls of worldviews. Once a worldview was certified by the men of power as the master worldview of their empire their axioms of civilization were accepted by all without further discussion and, as with mathematical axioms, they formed the unquestioned substrate from which would be derived all further logical conclusions and popular worldviews.
Time passing these axioms of civilization are soon forgotten by the conscious memory and then reside exclusively in the subconscious of the individuals which is the reason why so few people are aware that they exist at all.
deteriorate drastically and those populations only returned to pre-agricultural levels of health in late modem times. This is largely due to :
- a decline in the variety of their food sources
- large population concentrations and intermixing with animals which saw the spread of new diseases
- low levels of hygiene with waste heaps abutting the walls of habitations
- and so on.
Agriculture provides an abundance of grains but from a very narrow range of plants, 4-5 species only (wheat, corn/maize, rice, barley,…), while the diet of tribal societies relied on nearly 100 different plants. This means that a tribal diet offered a more varied bio-chemical intake than an agriculture based diet. It was was fast apparent that farmers had mineral and other deficiencies that plagued them with chronic diseases.
The result was a crumbling life expectancy that decreased by roughly 20-50% while the height of individual farmers shrunk by some 15-25 cm (various studies conclude with different figures). The health impact, plus larger work loads, explain why people in many parts of the world remained hunter-gatherers until recently even if they had to live in largely inhospitable lands. They were aware of the existence and methods of agriculture but they were not interested to convert to it.
In other words the non-availability of free land eventually forced agriculture in the Fertile Crescent that put humanity on a path toward power societies. In China a tribal cultural unification, around the symbol of the wisest among (wo)mean of knowledge also called a sage, was accompanied by the localization of the retreats of the (wo)men of knowledge in the tribal area of the sage. In a sign of appreciation of her or his wisdom the (wo)men of knowledge of the neighboring tribes started indeed to congregating at the site of the wise.
Followers later flocked to this central area resulting in larger concentrations of population and the emergence of the first Chinese cities around 5,500 BP. In all probability the tribesmen, of the whole area of cultural unity, were also assembling around the sage during annuals feasts once a year in a kind of pilgrimage celebration of the cultural unity.
A question has been harassing the minds of researchers in human prehistory over the last few decades without them finding any satisfying answer. How in the world could free people have adopted agriculture while it was so evidently having such a negative outcome for their health and their longevity while also imposing so many more hours of work than tribal people ? As of today anthropologists have not found any good answer to that question. They are still unconsciously under the spell of the axioms of their civilization and they can't thus shake their blindness !
As I have illustrated here above it was necessity that forced excess tribal populations to assemble in villages and then to defy the taboo related to the application of known agricultural principles. It is my view that power then acted as the fundamental factor helping agriculture to spread over time. In a first stage the pressure on villages for new land got answered by brute force and in a second stage, when their territory had expanded further than what brute force can control, force got eventually seconded by the imposition of a worldview that transformed the men of power into earthly representatives of spirits who soon, under the pressure of individualism and rising greed, were transformed into the absoluteness of gods.
Viewed from this particular angle the adoption of agriculture, with all its negatives, finally starts to make sense. It also necessarily implies that 'power worldviews' were the ultimate tool that finally stabilized the first empires some 5000 years ago.
But how about the role of the men of knowledge amidst those changes ?
If we refer to surviving local groups still adhering to a form or another of animism, albeit far removed from the real thing as may be the case in remote areas of South America Africa or Asia, we can observe that the men of knowledge are still very influential in their communities but the group is nowhere seen to take care any longer about their personal material needs. After the emergence of power the exchange for their services was being contributed individually by the demander in the form of barter of goods for the personal service rendered by the man of knowledge.
But the fact is that, for most men of knowledge, this kind of 'remuneration' was no longer sufficient to ensure the satisfaction of their material needs and so they had suddenly to contribute themselves to the production of those goods (food, crafts,...). This is how the animist (wo)men of knowledge got relegated to the margins of their power societies.
From an artistic perspective what is important to note here is that the men of knowledge all along that phase of build-up of power societies have continued to fulfill their role as art creators. It is very unlikely that any specialization-professionalization of the function of image maker, musician or dancer took place in an early stage of power accumulation for the good reason that power remained very unstable changing hands very fast leaving thus no time for any form of institutionalization to take root.
The socioeconomic changes imposed by power societies eliminated the collective ownership over the accumulation of reserves and this must have put an end to the tribal feasts. In consequence the men of knowledge were now limited to share their visual signs, music and dance movements during public ceremonies that were financed by small individual contributions. The abundance of food and drinks at tribal feasts must have starkly contrasted, in peoples' eyes, with what was available in ceremonies under power societies. But those ceremonies nevertheless continued to inspire the citizens in the decoration patterns of their dwellings, ceramic cooking pots pans and woven textiles. There is nevertheless no possible doubt that the quality of their arts must have followed the same down curve as their material lives. Local popular arts remained strong all along this early phase of power institutions but they lost the aesthetic magic
After Millennia of trials and errors at conserving their power some early kingdoms succeeded to reproduce themselves over the span of generations and started to compete with other successful kingdoms thus furthering the game of expansion that ultimately led to empires.
The co-optation, by the men of power, of the men of knowledge to share a common worldview with their citizens was the major reason for the increase in societal cohesion that eventually smoothed the reproduction of imperial institutions. It is most probable that the game of power concentration was paralleled by vigorous philosophic debates among men of knowledge about the nature of reality and the working of society and that the men of power themselves were on the look-out for seductive narratives that included them in the picture.
By the time a king’s territorial conquests made him emperor the philosophic debates among men of knowledge had already frozen different packs of general ideas about the nature of reality and the working of society. So the men of power generally choose one set of such ideas, or were imposed such a set, and made it the obliged reference within the boundaries of their territory. The ideas that grounded the narratives, which succeeded to impose themselves as the narrative of the master worldview of an empire, I call the 'axioms of civilizations'.
The axioms of civilization were transmitted from generation to generation as non negotiable foundations of their civilizational house. And all present and future theories and philosophies were then laid on top of those axiomatic foundations like the bricks of the walls of worldviews. Once a worldview was certified by the men of power as the master worldview of their empire their axioms of civilization were accepted by all without further discussion and, as with mathematical axioms, they formed the unquestioned substrate from which would be derived all further logical conclusions and popular worldviews.
Time passing these axioms of civilization are soon forgotten by the conscious memory and then reside exclusively in the subconscious of the individuals which is the reason why so few people are aware that they exist at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment