The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire (16 page)

Archaeologists suspect that the active tending of these plants began as early as 6,000 years ago. Perhaps 2,000 years later, some New Guinea highlanders were digging drainage ditches to encourage them. This activity suggests a delayed-return labor investment, and perhaps even active horticulture. Sago would have done well in the coastal swamps and yams on the drier plateaus. Eventually two more foods were introduced by watercraft. These were the domestic pig (possibly brought from Indonesia 3,000 years ago) and the sweet potato (introduced by ship from the New World after it had been discovered). The introduction of the sweet potato, which is superior to the yam when it comes to gardening above an elevation of 6,000 feet, led to population increases in the mountains of New Guinea.

Gardening required more than land clearance, planting, and drainage ditches. It also required magic. Some wet crops, like taro, were considered female; some dry crops, like yams, were considered male. In the plateau country a magical plant called cordyline—considered male—had to be planted on the female side of each garden to neutralize unwanted femininity.

Horticulture alone did not lead to inequality in New Guinea society. It is likely, however, that it led to the following changes in cosmology and behavior:

  1. The creation myth was revised to claim that spirit ancestors (among their other teachings) showed humans how to garden.

  2. Even those tribes with a history of immediate-return economy converted to a delayed-return economy, justifying the investment of labor in clearing and planting gardens.

  3. Prohibitions against hoarding were relaxed so that gardeners could begin storing plants such as yams and sweet potatoes.

  4. Previous behaviors in which men shared meat with everyone and women collected plants only for their family were modified. Now men pressured their wives to produce surplus plants for lavish feasts to which guests were invited.

  5. Bride-price escalated.

AN INTRODUCTION TO NEW GUINEA SOCIETIES

Like the //Gana people described earlier, New Guinea gardeners stopped moving from camp to camp during the growing season. Once having cleared land and established gardens, they began to spend longer periods of time in substantial houses of pole and thatch. They now lived in
autonomous villages,
meaning that each settlement was politically independent even though it had economic ties to other villages.

Some tribes lived in large communal houses that sheltered multiple families. In other tribes each family built its own house. New Guinea societies had their own versions of moieties, clans, and subclans or lineages, and they often created cycles of marriage exchange that were longer and less symmetrical than those of the Australian Aborigines.

New Guinea men believed in the same gender inequity we saw in Australia: women could never be as virtuous as men. Among the Etoro tribe, anthropologist Raymond Kelly discovered a “hierarchy of virtue” whose premises followed from Etoro cosmology. The steps in logic were as follows:

  1. Generosity is a highly virtuous behavior.

  2. Men provide society with both meat and semen; that is, they contribute life force.

  3. Women accept meat and semen, receiving life force rather than giving it.

  4. Hence, men are more generous and, by logical extension, more virtuous than women.

In addition to beginning life in a more virtuous state, Etoro men could enhance their prestige by achieving one of two statuses: (1)
tafadilo
(one of the respected senior males who shaped community decisions, directed raids on enemies, resolved witchcraft accusations, and authorized executions); or (2) spirit medium (an individual who could make prophecies, cure illness, conduct séances, and preside at rituals).

Women began life as less virtuous and had few ways to increase their virtue. They were forgiven for gradually depleting a man’s semen (which led to his senescence) as long as they bore him children; barren women were lower in the hierarchy of virtue than mothers.

Etoro society did not produce “Big Men” like those of some New Guinea tribes. Their hierarchy of respect went no higher than tafadilos and spirit mediums, followed by ordinary men, then mothers, and then barren women. Lowest of all in respect were witches, people accused of having stolen life force in order to cause illness or death. If found guilty of witchcraft, people might be banished or killed, unless they paid compensation to their victims’ kin.

Other New Guinea groups had even more extensive hierarchies of respect. The Chimbu tribe was noted for its high population density, which by the 1960s had reached 500 persons per square mile. When we consider that many hunter-gatherers lived at densities of less than one person per square mile, and that the overall density of the Etoro averaged three per square mile, the density of the Chimbu was impressive. To be sure, some of this density resulted from crowding together for defense from hostile neighbors.

According to anthropologist Paula Brown, Chimbu men fell into at least four prestige categories, as follows:

  1. Men who raised few crops, failed to accumulate the bride-price for a wife, and played only a small role in regional exchange were called
yogo,
“rubbish men” or “nothing men.”

  2. The majority of married men, who provided adequately for their families and met their obligations in regional exchange, were the average citizens of Chimbu society.

  3. Twenty percent of Chimbu men were more active than average in exchange and speech making and more successful at gardening and pig raising. They often had two or more wives and supported more dependents. It often took these men until age 30 to become truly “prominent,” as Brown calls them. Those over 50 had usually created a following of sons, sons-in-law, and brothers-in-law who contributed food and labor to their quest for renown.

  4. At the top of the prestige ladder were
yomba pondo,
“Big Men.” They represented no more than 5 percent of the Chimbu men; usually there were only one or two in each lineage or subclan. While most prominent men made speeches, Big Men were the ones chosen to speak when outsiders were present. They could initiate or veto group activities and were major participants in regional exchange. Often Big Men were responsible for directing the construction of a ritual men’s house, about which we will hear more later. Big Men also supported a certain number of “rubbish men” who ran errands for them. Perhaps, therefore, early Big Men should be credited with inventing the entourage.

As impressive as this ladder of prestige seems, even Big Men possessed no more than a strong influence. They did not occupy an office that came with any real authority. Their renown resulted entirely from their accomplishments. Moreover, in order to retain the prestige they had acquired, yomba pondo had to fight off constant challenges from ambitious younger men. Chimbu society, according to Brown, was in constant flux, with individual Big Men, lineages, and clans competing to see who could grow the most sweet potatoes, raise the most pigs, give the most spectacular feasts, and accumulate the most trade goods.

As fierce as the competition may have been when Brown visited the Chimbu, it had once been fiercer. Previous Big Men had been daring war leaders who assassinated enemies and led raids against other tribes for pigs, valuables, and revenge. “Chimbu men used to be strong fighters,” Brown was told; “now they are like women and children.” The suppression of warfare, head-hunting, and cannibalism in New Guinea was, of course, the work of the Dutch and Australian authorities who controlled parts of the island.

In retrospect it appears that men in precolonial New Guinea detected at least three routes to prominence and that they used all three. The first route—based on the premise that displays of generosity were good—was to use the labor of one’s wives, lineage mates, and clansmen to produce surplus yams, sweet potatoes, pigs, and other goods to give away at impressive feasts. The second route—which probably developed out of the vengeance attacks we saw among some foragers—was to lead head-hunting and pig-stealing raids against enemy groups. The third route—which probably developed out of an exchange network like the one described in
Chapter 3
for the Murngin of Australia—was to acquire impressive amounts of mother-of-pearl shells, cowrie shells, parrot feathers, bird of paradise plumes, and other exotic trade goods. Many anthropologists now believe that when colonial authorities denied New Guinea men the war leadership route, the latter redoubled their competition for trade goods. This activity raised their entrepreneurial skills to levels that fascinate us.

The combinations of strategies used by New Guinea leaders resulted in an amazing diversity of societies. At the same time, this diversity was built on an underlying set of shared principles. By raising their own plants and pigs, New Guinea tribes were able to overcome foraging society’s insistence that leaders remain humble and slow to anger, work to suppress violence, and give away everything they accumulate. Horticultural society took the desire to be well thought of by one’s peers, which until now had suppressed ambition, and surrendered it to the sin of pride.

The Era of Good Old-Fashioned Tribal Warfare

Even pacified New Guinea tribes expressed nostalgia for the days when “men used to be strong fighters.” Among the Chimbu, fighting was both a source of personal prestige and a reason some clans became rivals rather than allies. The causes of fighting included murders, the theft of food or valuables, the failure to reciprocate a gift, or insults of various kinds (what today’s youth would call “dissing”). Raiding parties carried spears, bows and arrows, stone axes, clubs, and large shields. During most Chimbu battles, fewer than 10 men out of 200 fought hand-to-hand, while 60 to 70 shot arrows from a distance, and the remaining men waited in the wings to see if they would be needed. After a few casualties there would be a ceremonial truce, with reparations paid for the victims.

For their part, the Etoro told Raymond Kelly of a raid in which tribe members allied themselves with their neighbors, the Petamini and Onabasulu, to burn a longhouse occupied by their traditional enemies, the Kaluli. Only two Etoro died, while many Kaluli were killed as they fled the blazing residence. The Etoro later paid the Kaluli 54 strings of cowrie shells and three stone axes to compensate for the Kaluli’s higher level of casualties.

The most legendary raids, of course, were carried out before colonial pacification. But anthropologist Bruce Knauft, who lived on the south coast of the island with the Marind tribe, found that their postcolonial cosmology still justified head-hunting. The Marind, according to Knauft, had been enthusiastic headhunters in precolonial days. As many as six large villages would join in a foray to
kui-mirav,
“the head-hunting grounds.” So exciting was this endeavor that whole villages were deserted during the head-hunting, or nonagricultural, season. About the only thing this activity lacked was tailgating spectators.

Raiders traveled over special trails in the forest, or by canoe over inland waterways, carrying sago flour as a provision. In 1884 a British ship came upon 1,200 Marind warriors, in 30 to 40 canoes, nearly 170 miles from their homes. Outnumbering their unsuspecting enemies, the warriors separated into platoons made up of men from the same village. They surrounded an enemy settlement by night and attacked at dawn. A warrior would crack a man’s skull with a club and then behead him; the victim’s last cry was assumed to be his name, and that name would be given to a future Marind child. The warriors spared children and young women because, in a polygamous world, young women were always in high demand.

Marind warriors often returned with canoe loads of heads, an estimated 150 a year. The heads were kept as trophies, while other body parts might be cannibalized. This head-hunting was not a random act of aggression but a death-defying ritual, believed to bring good fortune and abundant harvests to the takers of the heads.

CHIMBU KINSMEN AS BROKERS

Most horticultural tribes still valued the generosity and reciprocal gift-giving we saw in hunting-and-gathering societies. Indeed, these behaviors escalated in societies with lineages, clans, and moieties, because now each of these larger units had reciprocal relations with others. We will use the Chimbu as an example.

The Chimbu reckoned descent through the father’s line. Above the family was a lineage of 15 to 60 related men and their families. These lineages, in turn, were grouped into clans numbering 600 to 700 people each.

Sometimes the largest descent group in the area claimed to have been founded by a specific male ancestor, and each of its subgroups claimed to have been created by one of the founder’s sons. These men were all supposedly related through a common ancestor and had to marry outside their own clan. This practice required large marriage payments to the bride’s clan, involving mother-of-pearl shells, headbands covered with cowrie shells, parrot feather headdresses, bird of paradise plumes, special bridal axes, and pigs. The groom’s lineage mates and clansmen contributed much of this bride wealth, because few young men could afford it. When the groom was older and owned more valuables, he would be expected to reciprocate.

Chimbu clans, and even whole tribes, invited their neighbors to feasts that were supposed to impress them (and eventually to be reciprocated). Paula Brown describes piles of surplus vegetables 20 to 50 yards in diameter, proudly displayed before being given away. Every six to ten years, Chimbu villagers would invite several hundred guests to watch them sacrifice pigs to their deceased ancestors; later, the meat would be cooked and distributed to the guests. Each host group expected to receive a reciprocal feast one day, and no one ever forgot; inadequate payment of pork debt could provoke armed retribution. To be sure, after a successful raid the victorious group was expected to pay war reparations, once again involving trade goods and pigs.

Big Men also used lavish feasts to gain prestige. They quickly learned that the more wives a man had, the more yams and sweet potatoes his family could grow, and the more pigs they could raise. As we will learn later on, amassing an unrivaled quantity of food allowed a Big Man to humiliate his rivals by giving them more than they could repay. To achieve this, Big Men not only led pig-stealing raids against neighbors but also put pressure on their entire clan to contribute. There was risk involved, for if an ambitious man “maxed out his credit”—borrowing more than he could ever repay—he could lose his prestige and spend years in servitude to his creditors. Some archaeologists, as we saw earlier, suspect that this kind of debt servitude led to inequality on the Fraser plateau and in the Pacific Northwest.