An elite, believing itself in mortal danger or seized with celestial ambitions, would have little compunction in adopting survival strategies that risked killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
— James C. Scott
One of the key themes explored in this blog is the question of “what the heck happened” to get us into the mire we wallow in today. I have explained that I do not accept Quinn’s and Diamond’s hypothesis that agriculture is the culprit — although I agree with Scott that cultivated grains were political crops that made centralization and states possible. Those wishing to avail of my writings on that subject may click on the category of “origin of agriculture” to see all seven other posts on that theme, dealing with deep history, surplus, and the intensification of agriculture (and other aspects of the ancient food economies). In other series, I have explored the origin of equality and inequality (viz “roots of domination”).
Since the Small Farm Future blog and Chad over at Hipcrime Vocab are exploring the topic again, and so is James C. Scott in his (highly recommended) new book Against the Grain, I have finally made up my mind to finish the series so that I can move to other things. The pause in blogging has allowed me to settle into a mind pattern that I think works well. I don’t have access at present to all my notes, so some bits may need to be filled in later. Here is the outline.
Cultivation began in our deep past, in the Paleolithic, among hunter-gatherers. So did the rise of inequality. We have significant archeological remains testifying to the latter fact. During the Ice Age, in some sheltered places, rich in game, elites arose. Then the Ice Age grew colder, and they faded. They rose again before Younger Dryas, and faded once more during that inclement period. Then, with the massive moist warming of the Holocene, some areas on the face of our planet provided prodigious quantities of food for our forager ancestors — not only game and fish, but grass seeds, legumes, nuts and fruits, roots, tubers and berries. As Scott points out, these areas were often marshy at least part of the year (that explains why the Catal Huyukers built the first town ever so inexplicably amidst wetlands!). Ancient marshes not only abounded in ready-made human food, but also made possible early intensification of cultivation via periodic flooding. As he details so clearly, when foraging peoples spread wild seed on the soft moist ground fertilized by silt, cultivation was a child’s game, easy peasy.
With vast natural surpluses available, all human societies so blessed were faced with a dilemma. Do we share, or do we allow hoarding? The timeless tradition of “vigilant sharing” pointed in one direction… and I imagine most tribes kept on with it. But at the same time, in times of plenty vigilance tends to relax, people worry less about some individuals grabbing more, and certain types of personalities — the triple-As or aggrandizers (aggressive, ambitious, acquisitive people) begin to rise as they find ways to use the surplus for self-promotion and status games. Such individuals exist in all societies, and always have. Under egalitarian social structures, they are carefully watched, and if they get out of hand, they are knocked down a peg, or, if nothing else works, eliminated.
There is anthropological documentation that even among the Eskimos who have traditionally greatly feared such personalities, a sudden caribou windfall relaxes those worries, the sharing networks are suspended, and all can get as much food as they want. And so it happened in the Holocene. Many societies, like the Coastal Yurok, kept sharing (the Yurok would store surplus acorns in caches to which anyone had access, even travelers passing by). But a few relaxed their vigilance too far, and aggrandizers saw their opportunity to push the envelope. They were careful, in the beginning, to couch their hoarding schemes in the language of the good of the community, of course. The lavish feasts they organized meant a lot of work for them and their followers, and they were often left the poorest afterwards, having given all their wealth away. But they knew there was more coming their way, via debts and obligations, increasing competitiveness, and other strategies designed to keep people working more than they would ideally like to. I think of the aggrandizers as specialists in cranking out more work from otherwise work-averse humans who would rather live by the law of least effort, especially when Gaia provides so bounteously.
Step by tiny step, with much backsliding, the aggrandizers worked and schemed their way to more influence, more wealth, and eventually, more power. And since it was natural surplus that gave them the freedom to rise above their fellows, they put all their efforts into creating greater and greater surpluses. The New Guinea tribe of Enga is a perfect illustration of this very gradual slippery slope that leads to greater and greater elitism despite the tribe’s fairly egalitarian recent past. And so we end up with a system where “those who worked hardest and kept the least became those who worked the least and kept the most.”
Something of a big puzzle among anthropologists has been summed up by Chris Smaje thus: “How you make those inequalities stick in societies that generally are elaborately organised to build solidarity…?” My answer is by way of analogy. How do you begin with two modern human beings, a young couple who fall in love and marry, who have been raised as relative equals, both educated, with independent spirits, and end up some years down the line with a situation of profound domination and abuse by one partner of the other? The abuse does not come overnight, but begins via virtually imperceptible steps that eventually manipulate and intimidate the other into a position of cowering subservience and fear. And so it was with our ancestors. Small family obligations grew into heavy debts. Poverty appeared as some could not or would not keep up. Some nobler-than-thou families sprouted lineages linking them to guardian spirits or heroic ancestors. Religious societies were invented that promoted privilege for some. because, you know, their members were in special touch with the gods. The list of these “aggrandizer strategies” is practically endless.
Once the balance of power shifts in a profound way, whether in marriage or a band, it is very difficult to right it. And when the dominator has — in the former case — customs, cops, relatives and friends on his side, or in the latter case acquires the strongest hunters and warriors as his followers and well-rewarded goons, there is a moment that — however difficult to pinpoint precisely — transforms everything. A point of no return. A friend of mine gave it a name. Takeover.
Where does agriculture fit into this? As the now aggrandizer-run society keeps cranking out more and more work and more and more surpluses, its people get trapped in a hamster wheel, always trying to invent themselves out of their swelling overhead by getting more out of the environment. It does not matter what mix of hunting, fishing, gathering, and cultivation they follow — as long as they are driven to ratcheting intensification, their food-producing strategy will lead to ruin, sooner or later. Regardless of the official religion of the tribe, their real religion is the Cult of MORE. And here is where it gets even more pernicious.
Imagine thousands of societies living, as Daniel Quinn puts it, “in the hands of the gods” and sharing the bounty. But a few societies emerge that are run by aggrandizers and begin to crank out more work than their neighbors. More work, more food. More food, more people. More people, more tools, weapons, warriors, wombs. More raids won, slaves added to the workforce. Rinse and repeat. What we suddenly have is a short-term evolutionary advantage.
I say ‘short-term,’ because this runaway social system always ends with a crash; nevertheless, it’s lasted several thousand years now in some places, and has parlayed its evolutionary advantage into worldwide conquest. Escape routes have become few and far between. It has become known from recent anthropological accounts that some tribes have not been, as Quinn had thought, Leavers reaching back to the dawn of humankind, but rather Takers who escaped and became Leavers by choice. Rebels against takerism, apostates from the Cult of MORE.
I was once chastised that tracing the deep history of “what went wrong” cannot get us out of our predicament. And yet… awareness of what happened can turn into a butterfly effect. As Quinn’s B says: “vision is a river.” This river is carrying us to a waterfall. But rivers have been known to change their course in response to changes in the environment. Societies in decay reach a point when the aggrandizers begin inventing what David Graeber calls bullshit work. Building roads to nowhere, like the Chaco Canyoneers. Or canals running uphill, like the Peruvian Wari. Or pyramids and pyramid schemes, as our civilization has done. After all, the Cult of MORE must crank out more work, more food, more people lest the wheels fly off the chariot bearing its altar. Can we once again gather our wits, put the kibosh on the aggrandizers, stop the infernal treadmill, and let the living world live?
February 22, 2018 at 5:08 pm
I like what you’ve got here. I’m unsure how evidence of behaviors at the level of the tribe maps to regional and global civilizations. The missing part I’d like to see you explore is the question of energy use as distinct from nature’s bounty. Modern industrial civilization is rather unlike previous civilizations in that regard, which is why global population has exploded in the span of only a couple centuries.
February 23, 2018 at 8:38 am
Thank you, Brutus. As for energy use. the periods I have been covering relied on fire and human muscle for their energy, barely moving toward the use of slaves, animals, water and wind. Perhaps someone like Ugo Bardi could take it where I leave off? Off-hand, though, it seems to me that the Cult of MORE would motivate humans to look for more and more energy sources as it kept accelerating everything. ?
February 23, 2018 at 8:54 am
By the way, Chris Smaje has just clarified that moving toward hereditary rank is part of the Takeover. I may in time import our discussion to my blog from his for reference.
February 23, 2018 at 4:15 pm
Great to see you posting again, V… Lots to think about, as usual. 🙂
You mention Scott’s book ‘Against the Grain’ (now on my wishlist, thanks) – worth noting that there is another book of the same title by one Richard Manning that (IIRC) looks at the subject from perhaps a more ‘energy-centric’ stance… (Brutus, you might like it?):
He gave a good interview that summarises his view here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdr-maH3jtc
Looking forward to your next post… whenever that is! 😉
February 24, 2018 at 9:37 am
Welcome, Penwithian. Will check out the links… I may even do a review or a take on Scott’s new book. I gotta do some gloating… a lot of what he writes, you saw here first! LOL
March 1, 2018 at 4:16 pm
The Richard Manning interview linked above is terrific. I recall seeing excerpts of him used in the documentary What a Way to Go when the film came out. His emphasis on resource consumption is probably where I got that same emphasis. Whether resources are water or oil or sunlight or electricity, they ultimately all boil down to calories or food for life, which is sometimes termed Gross Primary Production (GPP), further divided into Net Primary Production (NPP) and Human Appropriated Net Primary Production (HANPP). Vaclav Smil’s book Harvesting the Biosphere (reviewed at my blog) informs my thinking on that subject.
Manning’s arguments rooted in evolution (read: we’re essentially the same humans as 200,000 years ago except that we’re now living in a wildly maladapted modern, technological world) are far more sensible to me than most of the other ways I read evolutionary biology argued. Same thing when he describes natural systems, as distinguished from human interventions. Like others, Manning places the principal branching point in human history at the development of agriculture. Leavergirl’s discussion of indigenous cultures not far removed from HGs considers behavioral dynamics presumably after our trajectory was already established.
March 2, 2018 at 9:55 am
Nice one V, good to see you writing again.
I might have asked before but do you have some links to the thing about inequality in paleolithic h/gers? What evidence is that based on? As far as I know the N.American potlatch cultures used the ceremonies precisely to limit the power of individuals and redistribute wealth, though their sedentism (along with the regular influx of wild food bonanzas as you note, especially the salmon runs) did seem to be driving them towards a more hierarchical social organisation in the long term.
Might have to get the Scott book. The marshland theory is interesting – haven’t they come up with similar explanations for the adoption of agriculture along the banks of the Nile and other rivers with regular flooding dumping nutrients and clearing the ground for large-seed annuals?
I appreciate the analogy of societies backsliding into hierarchy to the development of abusive patterns in interpersonal relationships, as well as your focus on aggrandizers and other personality types which that kind of culture actively selects for. Part of me resists the idea that this was all set off by individuals grasping for power, and looks instead for materialistic reasons it might have kicked off (I guess it stems from a desire to exonerate human nature, which others want to blame completely – ‘a fault in our stars’ so to speak). However that ‘cult of more’ you describe is so evidently driving the frantic modern race to annihilation, it’s a powerful way to relate back to its ancient origins and maybe (who knows?) the people then experienced it as a similar kind of sickness.
Nice to see Richard Manning getting some love. That’s a great interview he did for the ‘What A Way To Go’ film. Haven’t watched it for a long time. Like Brutus I got a big part of my thinking sparked off by his discussion of Net/Gross Primary Production.
best to all,
Ian
March 2, 2018 at 4:01 pm
So the much reviled (by our culture!) sense of stifling in small-town life called Tall Poppy Syndrome actually has evolutionary value in restraining aggrandizers from disrupting the functional equilibrium of a small-group survival system–keeping a better balance of social status, personal power and economic equality.
What is the evolutionary advantage of having a triple-A personality in the first place? More offspring? More willing to fight enemies or take risks like trying out possibly poison berries in times of scarcity? Bodily vigor that outlasts debilitating diseases? Mood-lifting and fear-calming social effects of hormonally induced self-confidence? If it were not sometimes a useful property it would not be likely to remain genetically encoded for so long.
March 4, 2018 at 6:27 am
I agree with everything you write here, I came to similar conclusions only formulated differently:
That most times in history the warrior societies succeeded, is due to the fact, that
1. In a society based on competition, the kind and good-hearted ones will be mercilessly eliminated and after a few generations the strong, mean, ruthless ones will dominate the gene pool.
2. The rivalry driven, militarized societies will recklessly exploit their natural resources (the tragedy of the commons) and after having exhausted them will need to conquer new territory.
3. The intensive exploitation of resources may be unsustainable, but it gives warrior tribes for a short time a competitive advantage against neighbors who use their resources more cautiously.
4. In the struggle against each other the warriors of competition-based societies hone their martial skills and also develop powerful weapons. The peaceful, cooperation-based societies don’t need martial skills and weapons, they are not used to fighting and therefore are an easy prey for invaders.
There is another dimension, or layer in the social grid which should not be ignored:
Male aggressiveness is a powerful driver of human conflict, violence, and war. The male sex drive intensifies competition, is motivation to strife for wealth, fame, power, and can be easily redirected towards national pride, arrogance, and hate against other ethnic and religious groups.
Fortunately humans, because of brain plasticity, would be able to change hardwired behaviors through the upbringing in the family, through education, and through social norms.
Unfortunately it is not happening yet. Individual efforts by loving parents, dedicated teachers, good-wiled people and groups are not enough, when advertising, the media and gaming industry, and political propaganda irresponsibly exploit hardwired instincts and negate all efforts to tame these instincts.
March 4, 2018 at 6:41 am
@ Brutus “we’re now living in a wildly maladapted modern, technological world.” Indeed, and the kids love it, spending all day with their smartphones, playing computer games, and lingering on social media sites. This is a global experiment which could have a bad outcome. An estimated 3.1 million adolescents aged 12 to 17 in the US had at least one major depressive episode. Depression affects more than 16 million US adults.
If the biophilia hypothesis is right, we will subconsciously miss nature and consequently suffer from ill mental or physical health. Which means: more mass shootings, more aggression, more social instability.
March 4, 2018 at 7:26 am
@ gkb
“So the much reviled (by our culture!) sense of stifling in small-town life called Tall Poppy Syndrome.” I liked Garrison Keillor’s News from Lake Wobegon. Appeared to me more sympathetic than anything else I heard about white US culture (African American culture is a different story). The tightly woven social fabric of neighborhood communities should be perfectly able to heal society’s ills. Unfortunately everybody stares at TV, computer, smartphone screens, and the social mesh is destroyed.
“What is the evolutionary advantage of having a triple-A personality in the first place? More offspring?” Right. More offspring, so that the genes of aggressive males dominate. One should not underestimate male aggressivity as a driving force of human history.
The only solution I see, is a coalition of reflective, non-testosterone driven males and thoughtful women building sanctuaries and hideouts to prepare a “reverse takeover” after the big crash.
March 4, 2018 at 7:41 am
@ Ian M
“that ‘cult of more’ you describe is so evidently driving the frantic modern race to annihilation.” We are hardwired to survive scarcity. The “overshoot” effect comes into play. Our movement to annihilation is propelled by overpopulation and technology (fossil fuels, nukes). These two factors make all the difference and invalidate survival strategies of the past.
March 4, 2018 at 8:48 am
@mato48: But Keillor himself is aTall Poppy personality who could not wait to escape from the farmlands and smalltown culture to the Big City Lights. He built a career on making fun of the small town attitudes. Gentle fun, certainly–but still showing a need to be superior to the values of the community. I agree that people who value the land have a better chance at preserving it.
March 4, 2018 at 9:30 am
David Wengrow, archeologist at Cambridge, and David Graeber are writing together a book about prehistory. Wengrow has uploaded a short text from that future book. It is available at https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/
This excerpt may be of interest:
“…recent discoveries indicate how little is yet truly known about the distribution and origin of the first cities, and just how much older these cities may be than the systems of authoritarian government and literate administration that were once assumed necessary for their foundation… To take just one well-documented example: around 200 AD, the city of Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico, with a population of 120,000 (one of the largest in the world at the time), appears to have undergone a profound transformation, turning its back on pyramid-temples and human sacrifice, and reconstructing itself as a vast collection of comfortable villas, all almost exactly the same size. It remained so for perhaps 400 years. Even in Cortés’ day, Central Mexico was still home to cities like Tlaxcala, run by an elected council whose members were periodically whipped by their constituents to remind them who was ultimately in charge.”
March 12, 2018 at 3:35 pm
This article argues that the origin of hierarchy in human social organization springing from the agrarian revolution is wrong:
https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/
As I often say, I can’t referee the debate, as I lack sufficient knowledge in the field, but I thought I’d at least pass it on.
March 13, 2018 at 3:48 pm
Haha, came back here to plug that exact same article! Interesting thesis but infuriating lack of footnotes so you can’t examine the evidence behind the multiple controversial assertions. I was pulling my hair out about the claim that British farmers abandoned cereals and went back to hazelnuts (while keeping cattle) for a period around 3300BC until I tracked it down to a 2012 paper by Stevens and Fuller, reviewed here:
http://roundedglobe.github.io/origins-of-british-agriculture/
(No full text available that I can find)
His optimism about making modern societies more egalitarian is challenging, but it’s hard to see it happening except via a big crash the way inequality has been skyrocketing in recent decades. I don’t see how it could happen voluntarily and reform attempts are doomed to failure if structural constraints are locked in (eg: the oil economy, finance, inflation, economic growth etc) making other ways of organising society basically impossible without +severe+ shocks to the system.
I found the emphasis on fluidity in social arrangements of prehistoric cultures broadly useful, even though it seems that evidence of hierarchy could be explained in other ways: maybe people buried with lots of jewellery were just especially loved members of the community?
cheers,
I
March 17, 2018 at 1:24 pm
The text (Antiquity) is unfortunately behind a pay wall. It sounds pretty straightforward, though, according to their excerpt: “This paper rewrites the early history of Britain, showing that while the cultivation of cereals arrived there in about 4000 cal BC, it did not last. Between 3300 and 1500 BC Britons became largely pastoral, reverting only with a major upsurge of agricultural activity in the Middle Bronze Age. This loss of interest in arable farming was accompanied by a decline in population, seen by the authors as having a climatic impetus. But they also point to this period as the time of construction of the great megalithic monuments, including Stonehenge. We are left wondering whether pastoralism was all that bad, and whether it was one intrusion after another that set the agenda on the island.”
Still have to catch up on articles below. Yeah, Nile is mentioned by Scott as one of the places on the planet where ag was ridiculously easy. Sources on inegalitarians? I recommend Hayden’s Power of Feasts, and Flannery and Marcus The Creation of Inequality. As for its happening in the Paleolithic, there are tons of mentions. I think I wrote about it here, and appended a pic of a Paleolithic aggrandizer. Yeah, look at the several bottom paragraphs, and the pic.
Here is is: https://leavingbabylon.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/to-crank-or-not-to-crank/
Lots of jewelry for loved ones? Only if you were rich enough to have some. 🙂 The question to ask yourself is, why would the people at Sungir spend untold laborious months, maybe years, making tiny ivory beads, sowing them on clothes, unless there is a social pattern established where human labor has been appropriated by someone who wants those beads? And why want them unless for status?
Potlatches… sigh. There is so much disinformation out there. Maybe reading Hayden will help.
March 17, 2018 at 2:19 pm
Oh and one more, Ian. You say, in your earlier comment: “Part of me resists the idea that this was all set off by individuals grasping for power, and looks instead for materialistic reasons it might have kicked off (I guess it stems from a desire to exonerate human nature.”
So, you made me think. 🙂 Let’s take our happy couple, Peter and Anna, who end up 5 years later with Anna appearing in public with black eyes, or broken bones. Do you think this situation stems from something being wrong with (their?) human nature? Do you think my hypothesis suggests something is wrong with their human nature?
March 17, 2018 at 4:07 pm
Being triple-A, as well as being a psychopath, has its evolutionary advantages. Having scruples slows you down. In some situations, that is a massive disadvantage. I have heard it argued that at times, having a psychopath at your side is as good as having a spiked club in your backpack. Psychopaths are also more immune to stress and the maladies linked to it. And there appears something of a bottleneck 8000 ya when fewer of the men grabbed most of the women…
March 17, 2018 at 4:11 pm
Thank you, Mato, for your good words below. So far, my logic seems to be approved by my readership, which I find very encouraging.
Reflective males, I am all for. Dropping testosterone? Hmm… in the coming times, women and children will need males who are men again, not pajama boys. Can’t men keep their hormones and get saner at the same time? 🙂
March 17, 2018 at 4:16 pm
Gkb and Brutus, thank you for that article by Graeber and Wengrow. Some whoppers in there (Neanderthals did not go extinct till 25K ya, as best as I can tell… ) but I like a lot of it. I think they are quite right about shifting from top-down to bottom-up, that’s been well documented. I also agree that inequalities start in intimate groups. Which, however, does not equal saying that all families have always been unequal — how the heck would anyone know? But in any case, this is where the real work is cut out for us, those who would like to see a shift. Which, of course, is very good news indeed, because that is where each of us can make a difference.
June 30, 2018 at 11:09 am
[…] and protecting that hierarchies arise and/or leveling mechanisms are relaxed. Leaving Babylon has a discussion of this here. Some few HG cultures survive into the 21st century, but for most of us, The Agricultural […]
October 12, 2018 at 3:07 pm
I watched a piece from time team and their investigation of Stonehenge , they found huge garbage pits full of pig bones ,literally hundreds of them ,the builders literally lived high on the hog ! They must have been pastoralists but some had to be farmers , the remains of several hundred pigs were in each pit , there was also grain remains Quorn stones and a fair number of broken drinking cups they seem to have partied at the solstice