Pushing & Pulling into the Neolithic
by Jason GodeskyHow the Agricultural Revolution happened is well understood. It is perhaps best explained by David Rindos‘ Selectionist Hypothesis, which Jared Diamond explained succinctly in Guns, Germs and Steel as a specific case of co-evolution. We could domesticate large herd mammals by identifying the leader; we could domesticate cereal grains because they were prone to harvesting. In the wild, a pea pod that doesn’t explode will simply die off, but to a human gatherer, such a pod filled with delicious peas is much more desirable than picking individual peas off the ground. Even without management, simply dropping a few peas by accident will leave even more of the mutant non-exploding pea plants near the traditional camp site when the band returns next year. Followed over centuries, this process will eventually create non-toxic almonds, turn aurochs into cows, and give rise to domesticated forms of wild organisms bred to better serve human interests. How this all happened is not the question. The question is why.
We have seen the shortfalls of agriculture. Neither are these shortfalls so gradual as to only be appreciated in hindsight; those buried at Dickson’s Mounds could see their own deteriorated health and their malnourished children, and remember the prosperity of their youth. The changes often took place within a single generation, like indigenous populations today where elders are dismissed by their children as prattling old men when they say that life was better before they were civilized.
Theories of why the Agricultural Revolution happened have traditionally been divided between “push” and “pull” theories. Childe’s “Oasis Hypothesis,” Braidwood’s Natural Habitat Hypothesis and the Population Pressure Hypothesis are all examples of “push” theories, where something forces a population into agriculture. Most “push” theories make no attempt to answer why agriculture was adopted, only how. Both Childe’s Oasis Hypothesis and Braidwood’s Natural Habitat Hypothesis explain how agriculture might have been made possible, but neither even attempts to explain why it happened. For both, “why” is an absurd question; the superiority of agriculture should be self-evident. As we have already seen, though, this is a severely flawed assumption.
By far, however, the Population Pressure Hypothesis is the most important of the push models. It is nearly taken for granted in many circles. The hypothesis states that agriculture had to be adopted because of rising populations through the Mesolithic. This always struck me as very nonsensical. For any given grain of wheat, one can either eat it, or plant it, but never both. Planting wheat is an investment of food; it’s sacrificing food now, in order to have more food in the future. Investment is not an activity engaged in by people lacking resources; it’s something only people with resources to spare indulge in. Poor people aren’t very big in the stock market, and starving people who buried all their rice would never survive long enough to reap the harvest. We take it nearly without argument that the Neolithic began with increasing, hungry populations, but there are two questions left unanswered:
- Since population is a function of food supply [PDF], where did this population come from? and
- Why did starving populations bury their wheat, instead of eat it?
By contrast to “push” scenarios, “pull” models discuss factors which enticed populations and pulled them into agriculture. The Selectionist Hypothesis mentioned above is the most widely accepted of these models, where co-evolution “pulled” human societies towards agriculture by providing domesticates. Of course, this cannot be the full story. The availability of domesticates hardly demands such gross inefficiency in their harvesting, and though no species evolves in a vaccuum, not many squirrels are known for their agricultural techniques.
Perhaps the most compelling of all these theories, though, is a “pull” model: Bender & Hayden’s Social Hypothesis. In this hypothesis, food production is taken up in all its deadly earnest to generate the surpluses required by Big Men for competitive feasting. In my next installment, I’ll go over why I agree so much with this hypothesis, and some of its implications for understanding agriculture and civilization.
See also “Food & Power: Hierarchy Formation & the Agricultural Revolution.” Jason Godesky, 2001. [PDF]
Not being a blogger at heart, I feel strangely embarrased putting this in — it’s part of a larger paper and a blog-style entry in itself. Nonetheless, it is directly related to the topic at hand. (btw, the following is a hypothesis only and a relatively crude one — in regards to research — at that. Comments are welcome/needed)
Either concurrent or preceding the actual evolution of man as species Homo, a trait arose which would prove vital to our survival as a race - the trait known as â??storytelling.â?? To be specific, it is the mental process that allows us to sequence events, understanding that incidents have a beginning, middle and end. This could have arisen out of an ape tool-using behavior but became increasingly significant in that it allowed us to become efficient hunters, changing the nature of our diet and our relationship with the world around us.
Utilizing this new skill would have led early humans to make very specific inferences regarding plants. Of all life on this world, the ones we most rely on are plants. They grow from the earth seemingly of their own accord, feeding on nothing but the rain, sun and soil. They provide nutrients for all species; even carnivores feed on things that have fed on plants. Those plants that do no not feed us can cause profound effects on us, either toxically, medicinally, or psychoactively. It is no surprise, then, that early man would have understood plants as sacred, a gift from the earth to support us all.
Though it is the most basic functions of a tribe to gather food, there would also need to be a person dedicated to seeking out new foods. That person, whose main task would be to deal with the sacred, would ultimately evolve into what is now termed a â??shamanâ?? or â??medicine manâ??, though, perhaps a more appropriate term would be â??god-talkerâ?? since his (or her) task was to commune with the forces of the divine for the good of the tribe.
Of course, as human culture grew and diversified, such a holy task would change into the tens of thousands of variants that were found in all tribes. Most, if not all, tribal god-talkers did however retain a basic respect for the earth.
One factor that weighed heavily on a tribeâ??s relationship with the â??sacredâ?? was their relationship with their environment. Taken in the context of this paper, tribes who lived in a state of plenty tended to perceive their relationship with the divine in a beneficial way; specifically, if you are blessed with abundant food, then logically, you assume that you are the chosen of the divine.
Within a tribal structure, a belief that your tribe is â??chosenâ?? allows for a very simple function, that of cultural delineation. Because tribal cultural boundaries exist, this acts as a simple and effective form of population control that allows for the preservation of a homoeostatic environment.
Obviously, if a tribe has the time to watch nature, they will quickly learn what it takes to garden. There is an issue, though; gardening is inherently a more difficult way to live, in that it breaks the natural tendency of a biosystem to diversify. If gardening is truly more difficult, why do it at all? The answer is simple and intuitive. You do gardening because you like it; itâ??s a leisure activity. If a tribe maintains enough of a food base to produce a small surplus, it can choose to grow foods that it truly enjoys. If it wants more dates, it grows more dates. If it wants more mangos, it can grow more mangos.
At approximately 14,000 years ago, the cool temperatures of the Pleistocene era gave way to de-glaciation and the warmth of the Holocene period. This resulted in the extinction of certain species (both animal and plant) and forced mankind to look for new sources of food (it should be noted that this has occurred in other transitional periods through the Pleistocene era). In one portion of the world, the â??fertile crescentâ?? of Iraq, one tribe reacted to this in a very specific way.
The An-aÅ¡ (a name derived from proto-Sumerian words for grain and one) were a tribe within the Fertile Crescent practicing gardening, foraging and hunting as their primary means of gathering food. With the end of the Pleistocene environment, they would have sent their god-talker out to discover new forms of food. Please note that this was not unique to the An-aÅ¡. Itâ??s well known that a number of cultures did the exact same thing and some of those cultures developed similar models (i.e. agriculture) to the An-aÅ¡. Yet, despite this, civilization as we know it arose only in the Fertile Crescent. Why? In part, it was because of the specific food item that the god-talker discovered - wheat. This food (for reasons outlined below) would have quickly been declared a holy food, a â??food of the gods,â?? for its combination of nutritional and psychoactive properties.
Upon bringing wheat back to his people, the god-talker and the An-aÅ¡ discovered through gardening that this new food grew like wildfire. It was easy to harvest, easy to use, and easy to store. A dilemna did arise though, in regards to hunting. The practice of agriculture requires a great expenditure of energy and vitamin deficiencies (from consuming the majority of your diet from grain) saps oneâ??s health. This does not easily lend itself to maintaining a hunting culture. Therefore, the An-aÅ¡ chose to become pastoralists as well, herding cattle or similar animals and keeping them close by. Since wheat and similar grasses served as good food for cattle as well as people, this showed the An-aÅ¡ they that had embarked on a plan set forth by the divine. They would have also discovered that cowâ??s milk produced a similar effect to wheat and this would have reinforced their cultural idea that they had found the one true proper way to live.
It has already been stated before that tribal cultures would have conceived plants as sacred things. Plants which produced strong psychoactive results would have been linked to spiritual sources as they produced experiences which were powerful and outside normal human experience. Wheat and milk stand as unique among human foodstuffs as they contain psychoactive substances within them in addition to any nutritional properties. The following is an excerpt from â??The origins of agriculture â?? a biological perspective and a new hypothesisâ?? authored by Greg Wadley and Angus Martin and published in the Journal of the Australasian College of Nutritional & Environmental Medicine, Vol. 19, No. 1, April 2000
Since then, researchers have measured the potency of exorphins, showing them to be comparable to morphine and enkephalin, determined their amino acid sequences, and have shown that they are absorbed from the intestine and can produce effects such as analgesia and reduction of anxiety which are usually associated with poppy-derived opioids. Mycroft et al. estimated that 150 mg of the MIF-1 analogue could be produced by normal daily intake of cereals and milk, noting that such quantities are orally active, and half this amount “has induced mood alterations in clinically depressed subjects”
Exposure to these exorphins would have led to a reinforcement of a cultural behavior, specifically that the divine were taking care of the An-aš tribe and that the An-aš were truly living a life chosen for them by the entities they worshiped.
This combination of herding and agriculture would also have lead to a secondary, though no less important, effect - the construction of hierarchy. Because the growth of a monoculture inevitably disrupts a biodiverse environment, one sees an increase in the species that feed upon that monoculture. Since the An-aÅ¡ agriculturalists now relied upon their crop as a primary food source, it became imperative to protect it. This would result in some of the tribe being selected to be full time â??guardsâ?? for the crops. Their overseer, who would provide them with food, would later evolve into what we recognize as a king. This is not unique to the An-aÅ¡ and has been seen with the rise of a number of agricultural cultures.
This ongoing war against competing species, especially since it was successful, led the An-aÅ¡ to an inevitable conclusion. If the chosen food of the gods is not meant for the other animals (which were being successfully driven off by man), then only one option is possible. This one “true way” of living is designed solely for man. It is logical, with such a divine mandate granted to them, to conclude that the gods are very similar to man. In fact, it could be said that god designed man in his own image. This premise, taken a step further, leads a person to consider that if man is like the gods, then the world was created for him. He may do with it as he pleases.
The ultimate test of this particular cultural paradigm came with the Younger Dryas, a millennia and a half Ice Age that began approximately 12,000 years ago. In that time, global temperatures returned to Pleistocene levels temporarily. To survive such an incident intact would reveal to the tribe the final validation they needed; they were meant to live this way forever.
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 23 March 2005 @ 2:21 AM
Just a couple of notes. While the Wadley/Martin study includes maize and soy in its exorphin categories, it appears that the exorphins they produce may be categorically different (or less potent) than wheat or milk. In tests done on children with autism that possess a sensitivity to opiates, they show little reaction to corn or soy.
Also, re: the Aztec civilization, one thing that always stood out to me was their response to population control was the use of sacrifice, a conclusion based on the idea that if this blessed food (corn) makes our people grow, then obviously, we are food for something else (the gods).
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 23 March 2005 @ 2:26 AM
Hey Bill,
Interesting. Question: the ‘An-as’ — is this a term that you (or someone else) has coined, or are the ‘an-as’ an actual prehistoric tribe? I ask because my own research suggests that the sumerian/ubaidians did not arrive in mesopotamia until the ned of the neolithic period.
Other thoughts…. I think it might be fair to say that ALL peoples think of themselves as ‘the chosen people’… the difference seems to lie in scale. Among tribal groups you frequently will find a distinct connection to a particular place. So it is not so much chosen of god, but chosen of OUR god(ie the god of this place, our place…). Do you have any thoughts on how this might have changed?
[quote]It is logical, with such a divine mandate granted to them, to conclude that the gods are very similar to man. [/quote]
Interesting. This ties in very well with sumerian theology. Man as ‘farmhands to the gods’…
Regarding the development of ‘guards’. Don’t underestimate the effect of competeing groups in the area. Most foraging tribes have no compunctions against ‘theft’ (from other groups). As they raided the stored foodstuffs of sedentary groups, a dynamic ‘arms race’ could easily have developed leading to both full-on agricultural groups AND full on raider-type groups.
Janene
Comment by Janene — 23 March 2005 @ 10:22 AM
The An-as is a wonderful example of how to butcher a language; in essence, I found the earliest recorded evidence of language I could find for that area and then stuck two words together without paying attention to small things like grammar and the like. What struck me about the combination of words was that they possess multiple meanings: One God, One Wheat, or even Lonely God. It seemed to encapsulate certain aspects of the burgeoning civilization.
Regarding the Anas and their religion, I have to note that I don’t find their behavior to be that unusual. There have been a number of discussions on this site regarding how ‘civilization’ (as we recognize it) arises. The problem (and, honestly, some of the despair) comes from the idea that the sort of memeplex that creates our society is inevitable.
What I’m postulating is that it takes an additional effect to stabilize the memeplex into the form we know of it today. Let’s take this into a cancer analogy. At this moment, you, I, and anyone reading this post probably have about a dozen or so tumors in their body. These tumors will ultimately be recognized by the body and processed out. However, if another factor enters play, they become cancerous and threaten the body as a whole.
The idea of a tribe enacting out ‘divine will’ makes sense because all tribes do that to some extent or another. But the power to actually show another tribe that the divine is on your side — that’s something different! I’ll note that it seems (at a cursory glance) that the civilizations that adopted wheat as their primary source of foods (the North African and European cultures) maintained this religious heritage of a strong humanistic relationship with their God. The Oriental Cultures, while possessing agricultural, seemed to have kept aspects of the ‘universal creator’ more recognizable to tribal cultures.
Which, as I read through my past stuff, doesn’t answer your question re:God & the Anas, does it? Hm. Here’s an observation I’ve made with the Native Americans. The Elders tell their children of how life is and how it’s been for thousands of years; their children look at the civilization outside of their culture, at the wonders it produces and say to their Elders “But what if the Europeans are right?”
I imagine the same effect occuring with the An-as. The Elders tell of a time when they were healthy and strong but the youth are bringing this obviously ‘divine’ plant and saying “But what if we’re right?” In the face of hard times, it’s easy to imagine the youth winning out. And after several generations of this, it becomes rote learning; nobody questions it anymore.
Hope that answered the question.
And thank you for the raider info! Also, where can I find more current information on Neolithic migrations?
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 23 March 2005 @ 1:31 PM
Hi, Bill,
VERY interesting. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything suggesting that wheat has a psychotropic effect… but it doesn’t surprise me, somehow.
That could indeed say a LOT about why a culture whose food supply is predominantly wheat-based might behave strangely periodically: they’re addicts! As we know, addicts to other substances notoriously have periods of “unexplained” violence, health problems, irrational thought patterns, beliefs in their own superiority (often twisting evidence to “prove” it), obsessiveness about obtaining their drug (often to the exclusion of alternatives), willingness to labor excessively for it and even fight/kill over it, the tendency to restrict it so that other users have to buy it, extensive denial of the harm their actions do to themselves and others, etc. Those would be magnified greatly when that drug is also literally keeping you alive.
The problem is that, while such addictions can be maintained without overtly harming the addict, over time, the need for the drug increases to the point where it starts having notably deleterious physical effects. This is also true of this kind of agriculture & the attitudes it spawned on the global scale; while it might’ve started as a good way of maintaining local homeostasis, it is severely upsetting global homeostasis now.
For a more psychological, 12-step-ish perspective of this, Ann Wilson Schaef expands on this idea without reference to agriculture in several books, including When Society Becomes an Addict.
Comment by Gus — 23 March 2005 @ 4:46 PM
Part of the point I want to maintain is that wheat alone is NOT responsible for our current mess; it’s just an important crutch that helped an otherwise disfunctional model creep along for thousands of years.
Ah, and as far as debilitating effects of addiction, we call it obesity. It’s not that -nobody- in history has ever gotten fat — it’s just that as our culture has progressed along this venue, we’ve been seeing more and more obvious physical health detriments occur in the general population. Instead of finding the culprit (a relatively easy task), we’ve been designing more and more mechanisms to allow the addiction while trying to mitigate the effects.
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 23 March 2005 @ 5:16 PM
Hey Bill,
Good stuff.
Info on Mesopotamian migration? Good question. Most of what I know has been accumulated over many years. I originally majored in Oriental Studies with a specific focus on Relgion and how it developed from spirituality into instittionalized dogma. In college I did an extended research project trying to answer the basic question of whether the Sumerians were native to Mesopotamia. My final conclusion was that they were not and probably came from somewhere South through the Persian Gulf. Happy to report that ten years later, this is exactly what the evidence has shown.
Anyway, I still go through research phases on the topic, so here are some resources that I have found:
On Catal Huyuk — between Catal Huyuk, Jericho, and Samarra you can get a fairly clear idea of what was occuring in Northern Mesopotamia as the Neolithic unfolded…
http://catal.arch.cam.ac.uk/catal/catal.html
Abzu is one of the best overal resources I have found. It is an online library of all-things-mesopotamian from the university of Chicago (home of the Oriental Institute. woulda liked to attend!)
http://www.etana.org/abzu/
And then a couple of other general resources:
http://ancientneareast.tripod.com/Akkad.html
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~kverhoef/owa.html
Have fun!
(BTW, if you are looking for specific info, feel free to ask questions and I’ll tell you as much as I know)
Janene
Comment by Janene — 23 March 2005 @ 6:05 PM
Janene,
Thank you for the info! What I’m trying to do is bring my thoughts out of the speculative and into the seriously academic. It’s a way to chip apart at the modern myths.
At least, that’s part of the plan…
Thanks again for the stuff. I’ll read up on it tonight.
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 23 March 2005 @ 6:21 PM
Janene —
You wrote: whether the Sumerians were native to Mesopotamia. My final conclusion was that they were not and probably came from somewhere South through the Persian Gulf
Might that migration have tied into myths of the flood? I’ve never believed in a global flood other than the sea level rise after the last glaciation (too much clear evidence contradicts it), but think the evidence for catastrophic regional floods in some areas within human times is pretty compelling, including the Black Sea and possibly the Persian Gulf. The Gulf is a fairly recent, fairly shallow creation, isn’t it? Do you know of resources that talk about this issue realistically?
Comment by Gus — 24 March 2005 @ 12:46 AM
Hey Gus –
that is one of the topics that I have looked into.
At present, it appears that the Ubaidians had a presence on Bahrein before moving up into the Mesopotamian marshlands. Before that, perhaps the horn of Africa…
I, personally, have come to the conclusion that the flood myths can be explained by a series of natural occurances:
1) Early agricultural societies ALL exist in flood plains — that is what made them work.
2) Any village/city in a flood plain is GOING to get seriously flooded some times.
3) Therefore, flood myths all over the world DO make sense.
As far as THE flood myth…. it may have the same source…. the first ubaidian/proto sumerian settlement in mesopotamia (Eridu) was actually built in the salt marshes so the flooding would likely have been particularly severe.
However, I do find it odd that the first ‘civilization’ arose in such a relatively marginal area. Perhaps this is simply a side effect of the migration pattern and the availability of good land to the north made it all possible. The other possibility that I am still looking for actual evidence to support…. is that culturally that had devloped all of the earmarks of civilization back on Bahrein (or before) anf that they experianced some disaster there that drove them inland. This is all purely theoretical (well… 90%), but I have considered this possibility as one that might explain the initial break with egalitarianism… a people in crisis will sometimes do that which they otherwise might not — like follow a strong leader, be willing to work extra at his request, etc…
Anyway, back to your question, Gus…. I’m not sure how long the Gulf has been there… but Southern Mesopotamia is a recent creation! At the time that Eridu was founded it was near-coasta whereas now it is, what, 100 miles from the coast?
Anyway…. for what its worth
Janene
Comment by Janene — 24 March 2005 @ 8:33 AM
Janene,
Your comments re: migration had me thinking. First off, Aztec civilization started in a similar manner:
“In the Aztec codex Tira de la Peregrinacion, commonly called the Migration Scrolls. The scrolls have the Aztecs leaving Aztlan, which was described as an island in a lake with Chicomoztoc depicted as seven temples in the center of the island. The Aztecs felt they were the “chosen people” of Huitzilopochtli. The Aztecs believed Huitzilopochtli their war god was their protector, how had them search for their promised land.” (lifted from http://www.crystalinks.com/aztechistory.html just for quickness)
So what happens if we add another step prior to the process of ‘civilization’
A (relatively) wealthy and well known local tribal culture (the An-as) gets hit like everyone else by the end of the Ice Age. Though they are suffering like everyone else, because of their wealth they are marginally better off — and thus prey for raiding foragers also in trouble! This ultimately forces them off their land until they find a place where they can stay in peace, the marginal ecosystem of the salt marshes.
Here is why, mythologically and culturally, I’m proposing humans. If an event forces someone off of the land, it’s a god event (see the Hopi myth of the different worlds for clarification; basically, the myths become ‘we screwed up and had to go somewhere else’).
If people force you off your land, it’s their fault — and when your god provides you with another opportunity (like good agricultural land which actually seems at least mildly viable to ex-gardeners), you take it and bide your time for revenge.
Victims of abuse often grow up to be abusers. One could argue the same for cultures. Ultimately, if your culture is a stable one, population-wise (like most non or semi-agrarian cultures), you will have to get along with your neighbors and your myths and culture will change to reflect that. If, however, your people start to grow past their borders (because they’re eating a lot of wheat), it gives you an impetus to maintain that idea of ‘just revenge’.
Make sense?
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 24 March 2005 @ 9:41 PM
Hi, Bill,
Yeah, that makes sense, esp. the idea of abuse being passed through cultures. After all, what are cultures but groups of people, and if a lot of the people are abused/abusers, the culture is likely to be.
Janene — If you haven’t seen it, here’s an extensive summary of worldwide flood myths
Comment by Gus — 25 March 2005 @ 12:35 AM
Hey –
Yeah, you are coming to many of the same questions that I have pondered, Bill. I do think that there is some scenario involved there that both explains the ‘out of eden’ myths and that also may play a role in vision change — much the way you describe.
On the Aztecs…. my mesoamerican knowledge is MUCH thinner than the fertile crescent, but…. the Aztecs descended from the Toltecs, yes? And I recall seeing something recently about the Toltects rising as a power after being invaded by a highland-warrior culture. The visual I recall (from the show) was a large lake with a lerge island at its center… this being the eventaul empire’s origination and (at least mental) center. I should go look it up before even commenting, but I don’t have time this morning… so I’ll let you y’all tell me if you think I got it backwards….
Gus — your link isn’t working…. but I have probably seen most of the flood myths at some point in time, as it was a primary focus of much of my research. Have you seen any info on Bob Ballard’s deep-sea excavations around the Black Sea? It appears that sometime around the end of the ice age, a large chuck of land beteen the Black Sea and the Medeterranian collapsed, causing the Black Sea to grow by some 40% (guestimate). There are many sites of habitation from that period that were flooded during the event.
That’s actually something I have been looking for more info on… has anyone here ever heard of the ‘Danube River People’? They were a nomadic group, moving up and down the river danube that had some similar cultural traditions to those found in Mesopotamia. One of my profs delivered a lecture on them oh… twelve years ago… and that is the only real info I have ever had on them. But when I heard about the Black Sea flood, I had to wonder if they were driven north and west while some of thier cousins were driven south and east….
Janene
Comment by Janene — 25 March 2005 @ 9:25 AM
Bill,
It’s an interesting scenario, and not an entirely unlikely one, but I have to quibble with your assertion that our civilization is somehow unique. What was it that so uniquely defined the Persians as significantly different from the Aztecs? Both were hegemonic empires, content to leave other cultures intact so long as tribute was forthcoming. Or, how do the Chinese differ so drastically from the Egyptians of the Old and Middle Kingdoms, in their smug contempt for surrounding barbarians and a reluctance to waste their energies on such trifles? Or, how does the Inka’s divine mission to conquer its savage neighbors and spread civilization differ so much from Christendom’s commission to spread the gospel to all nations? Is not the founding premise of both that a love of one’s fellow man necessitates their brutal conquest?
There is little to delineate these cultures in terms of “vision.” The parallels between them are striking (see “War & Society” [PDF]). The sad fact of the matter is that agriculture is such a marginal way of life that it allows for very little diversity, making all civilizations everywhere differ only in the most superficial ways. Even the titles of minor bureaucrats are easily translated from Chinese to English and back again. Feudalism is an astonishingly specific economic system, yet nearly every civilization has had it at some point. Compared to a forager culture, the incredible homogeneity of agricultural cultures becomes apparent. Anthropologists continue to debate whether such fundamental concepts as “shaman” and “Big Man” are even valid cross-cultural roles, or if the diversity of cultures is so great that they can only meaningfully be applied to the Siberian and Melanesian tribes they derive from. We can easily translate the titles of rulers between civilizations because our concepts of rulership are so similar, reducing the main differences to merely which arbitrary sounds are assigned to represent those concepts. But the diversity of human society in general is so immense that we have a hard time even coming up with terms to refer to the most basic roles in tribal societies.
So what differed between Europe, China and the New World? Why did Spain conquer the Inka, and not vice versa? It had nothing to do with motivation–they shared that. It had to do with opportunity. Geography, climate, guns, germs and steel. The Europeans had it; the Inka didn’t.
I’ve lost my faith in vision for a very simple reason: humans can rationalize anything. I say this as the only person I’ve ever known who had a true conversion, a complete turn-around in my views. Everyone else I know grew up with a certain set of views, and all data they have recieved since then have been rationalized, justified, turned around and fitted into their pre-existing ideology. There is sometimes some minor back-and-forth, but I have never known anyone but myself who did a complete 180 degree turn based solely on ideas. No matter how jarring, convincing, tempting or rational, humans just don’t change their way of life for a mere idea. They rationalize it, in order to live comfortably with the new idea, without having to change their lifestyle.
If anything, I would say your scenario merely underlines this conviction. The stories of chosenness and rightness didn’t drive their lifestyle, it was a story concocted after the fact to justify it and rationalize it. The Australian Aborigines believe in the primacy of humanity. The Etoro would love nothing more than to wipe out their neighbors. Ethnocentrism is a cultural universal. These are basic things that all humanity holds in common. I would even go so far as to say that evolution itself is driven by the constant struggle of every species constantly trying to take over the world, and constantly failing. Evolutionary drives are not refined enough to impose limits like, “until you become overpopulated.” They simply drive us in one direction. The subtlety and nuance of evolution arises from setting these drives in conflict, and carefully balancing them so that everything works. Carrying capacity and population cycles–the interdependence of species–ensures that no species can ever make good on its will to conquer the world.
Until, of course, some species comes along that gets a control on its own food supply….
The Kwakiutl were bound to their rivers by the salmon runs, and couldn’t make good on their will to conquer the world. The Aztecs and Inka were bound by the shifting latitudes and climates around them, and couldn’t make good on their will to conquer the world. The Chinese were bound by an endless, nigh uncrossable sea of grassland on one side, and the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean on the other, and couldn’t make good on their will to conquer the world.
But then, our culture found the means to cheat evolution, control our own food supply, and take our surplus with us wherever we go in such a way that we could spread across the whole earth, thus setting in motion the Holocene Extinction, the seventh mass extinction in the history of the earth … because you can’t cheat evolution for very long, before it catches up with you.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 25 March 2005 @ 10:12 AM
Hi, Janene –
Yeah, I’ve read about that Black Sea theory; that’s where the reference came from. He believes the Sea was originally freshwater, but something caused the Bosporus to break through (quake?), allowing Aegean salt water to flood into it. That’s why the Black Sea’s dead below 500 feet? meters? whichever depth it is. Some theorists suggest that flood sparked migrations in several directions & might’ve been the origin of the idea that the ark landed on Ararat (which, given the geography, would be physically unlikely, but a plausible distortion of the story over time).
the Aztecs descended from the Toltecs, yes?
I’ve read a fair amount about Native America & the desert tribes (I used to live in Phoenix), and from what I’ve seen, the answer’s “no.” The Aztecs did CLAIM such descent, but the evidence (and their own legends) indicate they were a desert hunting tribe from northern Mexico until shortly before their rise to power. They may have learned from the Toltecs, might even have been subordinates in their society, and linguists think their language might’ve been related (many of the desert tongues are of the same group, termed “Uto-Aztecan,” which sprawls well up into Nevada).
The island reference is the legend behind their founding of Tenochtitlan, their capital: Supposedly, they were told by a god to build their city wherever they saw an eagle perched on a cactus eating a snake, and they saw such a thing on one of the swampy islands that dotted Lake Texcoco (one of several shallow lakes that once existed in the Valley of Mexico. Almost all of them have since been drained & paved over by Mexico City’s sprawl.)
Re: the Danube River People… Andrew Sherratt wrote a book entitled Warriors & Traders: Bronze Age Chiefdoms in Central Europe that might help you here.
Comment by Gus — 25 March 2005 @ 1:06 PM
Jason,
I do understand the bleakness of your vision. I’ve felt that way before when I undertook my own 180 degree turn (ex-Republican, big believer in the system). But I’ve got a few points in response.
I’m not arguing that the vision of the different agricultural nations is unique; in fact I’d say most of the posts I’ve seen on this site argue that the evolution of such societies are depressingly similar. In this fact, I agree.
What is interesting is that such civilizations collapse and don’t necessarily rise again in the same spot. This indicates that the meme which creates the neolithic mindset is quite possibly an unstable one. This makes sense — agriculture begins in a marginalized center, spreads out and then the center horrifically collapses due to overfarming, ecological disaster, war, whatever. The people outside revert back to less intensive ways (such as pastoralism) under the influence of their tribal neighors because it’s just easier!
Instead, our civilization kept going; it imported its madness to other cultures in such a way that whenever the center collapsed, the viral meme just kept on going. I believe this was due, in part, to wheat’s psychotropic effects which acted as prop to stabilize the meme.
There’s some question, due to the influence of Taoism in the East, as to whether they would have continued to be as destructive without the influence of the West. Could the agriculture there have been modified into a more permaculture style system? Who knows? It’s a moot point, now.
Right now, a lot of people want some new way of living; they just have no means or idea of how to achieve it. Mythology offers three ways to deal with a crisis: (1) Run from it. (2) Fight it. (3) Trick it.
By analyzing our origin and distilling a likely hypothesis for the Neolithic that fits in modern terms, we can create a series of tools to trick the paradigm into fixing itself. There are (at least) two distinct phases to this. (1) The elite must no longer be allowed to invent excuses for their actions [this is easier than it seems because the elite are a small group that -can- be changed] and (2) the non-elite must be given a physical, simple, easier paradigm within which to live (NOT a vision, because that’s not what they are looking for but actual physical options).
Breaking the vision alone won’t work because inertia will carry the destructive meme forward. Combining a vision shift with practical models will work because people like having something put in front of them.
All right… rant done for the moment. Still not sure if that answered anything but it’s a start I suppose.
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 25 March 2005 @ 2:29 PM
As Jared Diamond showed in quite an exemplary fashion in Collapse, past civilizational collapses had nothing to do with vision. The Greenland Vikings had the same vision as us, but their civilization collapsed anyway. The resources they needed disappeared, and their civilization died. They didn’t take up less intensive ways of life because of the good example of their tribal neighbors; they did so because the more intensive techniques they were used to were no longer possible.
A good example is the Maya. They suffered an ecological crisis that destroyed their civilization. Most reverted to a less intensive form of subsistence, but the ecology would not support the widespread civilization they once had. A few kingdoms persisted right up to the time of the Spanish conquest, but they lacked even the ability to project force against their tribal neighbors. No vision change took place, no one convinced them to give up agriculture. They had to, and afterwards invented a vision and stories to justify and rationalize it.
Ironically, I actually agree with your plan. By forming our own Tribe of Anthropik, we’re enhancing our own chances of survival–but also giving the lie to the idea that there’s no alternative to civilization, or that life beyond it is “nasty, brutish and short.” No amount of vision will change people’s minds on that; they need to see people living it. Even that I don’t see as having much hope of changing too many minds, but those who have ears to hear, just might hear.
But I don’t think my vision is bleak at all. I founded two occupational tribes, hoping to lead a marginally better life but convinced that civilization would not fall until after my death. I would never know true freedom, but I could hope that my children might. And because civilization is all about vision, I needed to engineer all manner of clever taboos and practices to keep it from rising again, constantly second-guessing the most subtle nuance of everything. Even my children who might know genuine freedom, would still have to live in fear, not only that they might backslide into civilization, but that one of their neighbors might, and then come to conquer them.
That is a bleak vision.
My vision is more of the earth breaking a long fever. The transition is hard, but when it’s over, we’ll finally be free. I may actually know freedom in my lifetime, and without the constant fear and doubt. I no longer have to worry whether or not the Taker memeplex may rise again, because even if it does, no matter how much you believe you were born to rule the earth–the way the Australian Aborigines believe–doesn’t matter unless you can make good on it. And after all the resources we have depleted, geological ages will pass before humans will ever again be able to tap the resources necessary for industrial society, without an industrial society already in place to extrace them.
For the first time in a very long time–since I first read Quinn–I can look forward to true happiness in my final days. I don’t consider that bleak at all.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 25 March 2005 @ 3:05 PM
Jason — While I agree that civilization as it’s currently structured is mentally and physically ill, and we need to make major changes for the benefit of future generations (maybe, in fact, to allow there to BE future generations), I think you are too willing to throw EVERYTHING civilization has accomplished away.
Your wrote: No amount of vision will change people’s minds on that; they need to see people living it. I agre entirely there… but we need to keep history in mind while doing that. Colonists in N. Amer. were often exposed to people living a non-Taker way, in the form of Native Amer. tribes, and quite a few colonists “went Indian” b/c they saw it was healthier. But the great difference in technology coupled with the Taker attitude swept many of those tribes away.
For the change we’re seekign to work, those who opt out of the system need to keep some of the technology the system has, especially communications, medicine and weapons, or we’ll simply be run over again. Those things, and others that underpin them, can, however, be made in ways that aren’t wasteful, polluting, greedy, etc. There may also be other forms of tech that barely get noticed today that could be expanded upon that create more than they destroy.
I don’t kow what those might be, but think it’s important to examine society to lay out what’s worth keeping as it is, what can be kept with changes, and what needs to be discarded.
Comment by Gus — 28 March 2005 @ 3:22 PM
Oh, speaking of vision & the damage lacking one can have, check out these articles:
“Recovering Tribal Wizdom”
“To combat these negative effects that have been introduced to our people, I feel it is imperative that we begin to revitalize our traditional educational practices. For the benefit of Indigenous and non-Native youth alike, we need to acquire a truthful account of the history that has lead to our current existence within this colonial society. In order to overcome the atrocities that Native people have endured, we must now face with honesty the misconceptions and harmful tactics that have been imposed upon us and together seek positive and beneficial solutions.”
“Tragedy At Red Lake: A History of Self-Hate Among Indian Youths”
“I can only wonder how things might have turned out differently if Weise had had a traditional Ojibwe upbringing, was well-acquainted with his native tongue and traditions.”
Comment by Gus — 28 March 2005 @ 5:25 PM
Under the better late than never category,
One comment I wanted to make on civilizations is that I personally consider a lot of them to be ’shadows’ of what they once were. Imagine it this way; the culture is overtaken by the Taker meme and assimilated into it. How does that meme manifest given their unique perception of the world? Sometimes they evolve (for a time) into something that tries to be environmentally sound or relatively progressive. Each time, it collapses under the weight of its own conflicted ideals (Consume more vs gentle on the earth).
As far as the -kill your neighbors- vision, we’ve seen that this applies to a number of tribal cultures as well. It’s just that, without agriculture, it’s difficult to do it and even with agriculture, you still have to justify what you are doing to your world and your people. Wheat just gives people a stronger religious purpose to keep things going (at least in my humble opinion). It’s a great opiate for the masses. (heh)
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 24 April 2005 @ 3:05 AM
It’s that similarity in vision between civilizations and tribes that convinces me more than anything that vision is not such an important thing after all. Our visions don’t differ all that much, but our means do. The Kwakiutl would have conquered the world if they could–but they couldn’t. The same way that an agricultural society can’t help conquering the earth even if they try not to. More and more, vision seems like a rationalization we come up with after the fact, not a primary cause.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 27 April 2005 @ 9:21 AM
Aha! I think I finally see the problem now (geez — took me long enough). It has to do with the idea of ‘primary cause’. If I understand you correctly, you stated that Quinn argues that vision is the primary cause for the change from stable societies to the lurching monstrosity we have today. (of course, I could just look this up in the canon, but why be productive?
). The problem is I don’t believe in primary causes (at least in this case).
I look at the situation as a number of interrelated facts that allowed the system to perpertuate itself. I believe that, if any of the props fall away, the system ultimately self-destructs. To put it in a metaphorical way, it’s like a tumor in the body — they happen all the time but are suppressed by the body’s system. Only a very few, under certain circumstances, arise to become truly dangerous.
The Californian First Nations had the abundance but not the vision. The Kwakiutl had the vision but not the abundance. The people of Rapa Nui had the vision and the abundance but were isolated. Our people has vision, means, and a physiological justification (pseudo-addiction) to keep on going.
Even isolating it down to the two causes listed above doesn’t do it justice. I’m relatively sure we could come up with a dozen criteria that lead to this happening. But that’s not the point.
The point is that if you hamper the vision, you help slow down the process. If you disable any portion of it, you have a chance of stopping it. That’s what makes dealing with the vision important. Still, to stop it all from happening ever again? I think that will require building something different.
Hope this all makes sense!
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 27 April 2005 @ 10:53 AM
In the social sciences, we tend to see problems as overdetermined–having multiple causes, as you argue. It certainly has merit. However, I suspect this is a consequence of our views of human nature as inherently “fallen.” We are riddled with problems, so naturally there are many simultaneous failings that plague us.
In nature, things work. They work well, and more often, they work elegantly. When problems arise in nature, we expect to find a single cause, that expresses itself in a host of symptoms. There is no reason to intuitively think that a runny nose, a cough, and a fever have anything to do with one another, except that we’ve experienced them as a set before. A single maladapted microorganism running amok in an unfamiliar host gives rise to a whole host of symptoms.
I’ve found the overdetermined viewpoint often leads to paralysis. Our problems can’t be solved, because they have so many causes, many of which are unsolvable. I also reject the notion that humans are somehow “fallen,” so I take a more medical view of our problems. We know the symptoms; what cause can we trace them back to? It is my expectation that humans work well, and elegantly, but one little thing went wrong a long time ago–and all the ills that plague us now are the myriad symptoms of that “illness.”
Comment by Jason Godesky — 27 April 2005 @ 5:23 PM
I realise I am posting to this thread very late indeed, and may say things that are completely covered in other subjects:
1) Origin of Sumerians, Floods etc - see Stephen Oppenheimer’s ‘Eden in the East’ for his story about the drowning of SE Asian Sundaland after the Ice Age, his speculations on the origin of the Sumerians, (and Polynesians) and (almost half the book) discussion of various flood myths.
2) See http://www.sambali.blogspot.com for Paul Manansala’s speculations about Austronesian voyaging, etc (suspiciously, though, mostly starting from his home province in the Philippines). He also believes that Sumerian originated from Austronesian voyagers, but I didn’t find that too convincing - most of the words he cited as cognates were missing from the ‘Sumerian Lexicon’ published on the net.
3) Black Sea Flood - see William Ryan and Walter Pitman - ‘Noah’s Flood’ - very interesting
4) Bahrain (literally ‘Fountain of the Sea’ in Arabic) is still peppered with hundreds of tumuli - Some Danish scientists dug there and, I think, off Kuwait, hoping to find the legendary Dilmun, about 40 years ago.
5) Raiders - My Jordanian trading partner’s name was ‘Ghazi’ - literally ‘raider’ in Arabic. There is still a strong tribal culture in Jordan, and a strong town vs country/planter vs pastoralist dichotomy. (Now a bit swamped by the huge number of refugees from that country to the West).
And may I also comment favourably on the very high standard of replies to the articles I’ve read.
I came across this site only a few days ago, having just found the paper on wheat exorphins, by googling for ‘exorphins rice’. I’m glad I did.
Comment by Richard Parker — 13 August 2005 @ 8:56 AM
Very interesting–I’m glad you stumbled in here, Rich! All this is very intriguing.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 13 August 2005 @ 10:14 AM
G’day Folks,
from Oz,
I have been learning more and more about Exorphins in staple ‘Western’ Foods (Actually peoples of the Indo-european family of languages) for the past few years since I too read my compatriot Greg Wadley with Angus Martin’s, paper. Please everyone see updated information from Greg Wadley and citations to and clarifications of his writing at his University webpage: http://www.dis.unimelb.edu.au/staff/gwadley/ethology/ethology.html
While his paper orginally published in 1993 in The Australian Biologist is very good as an introduction to this staple ‘western’ foods-drugs subject and it’s implications, it has some serious shortcomings. That I know in some cases or suspect in others cases, that Greg Wadley has updated his views nowadays. For a crucial instance of an updated view about this importance of exorphin (opioids) in the transition to ‘western’ agriculture in the fertile crescent see the very well written and richly informative paper that Greg Wadley cites:
Hillman G, Hedges R, Moore A, Colledge, S., and Pettitt, P. (2001)
New evidence of Lateglacial cereal cultivation at Abu Hureyra on the Euphrates Holocene 11 (4): 383-393
The evident civilisation and development since many thousands of years ago of highly sophisticated and evolved kinship systems that contrary to Wadley & Martin (1993, p. 6, conclusion) involve “devoting effort to the benefit of non-kin” before or without any staple food-drugs is one instance that is a crucial exception to his hypothesis, that Greg Wadley doesn’t yet seem to know about but may do so, in the instances (best known examples to me) of the 600+ different societies in Terra australis - Australia (officially recorded today 260+ fully different languages - the 600+ figure being the official count of the no. of dialects across all those languages and what are the so called tribes or tribal language areas) - the many societies & civilisations that as far as is known didn’t get addicted to or even perhaps ever have access to staple drugs-foods until western colonial invasion, but nonetheless, despite stereotypes and pre-conceived vain ideas of Europeans or ‘Westerners’ to the contrary, did for tens of thousands of years have the choice of agriculture because they had the faculty of agriculture all that time and only in a few areas of Australia did the pressure, desire or need arise to impliment that faculty of (full) agriculture. See “Agriculture: was Australia a bystander?” by Peter White - Archaeology, University of Sydney, Australia, presented at the World Archaeological Congress 2003 for a recent reference on this - see: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=cache:MT8vXyKw_eQJ:godot.unisa.edu.au/wac/pdfs/191.pdf+
And see - Fullagar R & Field J 1997. Pleistocene seed-grinding implements from the Australian arid zone Antiquity 71 (272): 300-307. at: http://www.emu.usyd.edu.au/docs/field_5.pdf
The upshot of all this revision of western cherished illusions and stereotypes is that there evidently are clearly various different avenues or ‘life-ways’ to develop civilisations and highly evolved societies that include amongst other developments “devoting effort to the benefit of non-kin”, to quote one of Greg Wadley & Angus Martin’s pivotal points again.
There is a very large anthropological scientific literature on the many kinship systems and spiritualities of the civilisations and highly evolved societies of Australia. The best writings are by Indigenous writers themselves who have had the opportunity to also in addition to there own culture, learn’t to write in ‘western’ anthropology including getting there PhDs and so on. Marcia Langton is one fine writer, thinker, academic and person for example. A review paper to catch up with the state of the ‘western’ level of understanding to 1992 of the people’s of Australia is Professor Max Charlesworth’s “Introduction” in Religion in Aboriginal Australia - An Anthology
see online scanned copy (with some scanning errors) at: http://theology1.tripod.com/readings/charlesworth.htm
Key papers by Marcia Langton are:
Marcia Langton 1999 ‘The fire that is the centre of each family: landscapes of the ancients’ in A Hamblin (ed) Visions of Future Landscapes. Proceedings of the Australian Academy of Science 2-5 May 1999 Canberra 169-178.
As at (large): http://affashop.gov.au/product.asp?prodid=12831
or (large): http://www.daff.gov.au/corporate_docs/publications/pdf/rural_science/vision.pdf
Intro at: http://www.daff.gov.au/content/publications.cfm?Category=Bureau%20of%20Rural%20Sciences&ObjectID=4F5E088D-E9BF-4AFD-819DCC63FEF98696
Marcia Langton 1999 ‘The fire at the centre of each family: Aboriginal traditional fire regimes and the challenges for reproducing ancient fire management in the protected areas of northern Australia’ in FIRE! The Australian Experience, Proceedings of the 1999 National Academies Forum Australian Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering Ltd 3-32.
As at: http://www.atse.org.au/uploads/FireLangton.pdf
Intro & Abstract at: http://www.atse.org.au/index.php?sectionid=190
Best wishes to all,
Jase
Comment by Jase — 16 March 2006 @ 10:49 PM
How do you move something, anything without pushing or pulling?
Comment by Clyde — 21 May 2006 @ 3:45 PM
You don’t. That’s why theories on the origin of agriculture are divided into “push” theories and “pull” theories. The title was punning on the technical jargon of anthropological debate on the subject.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 21 May 2006 @ 3:51 PM