The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire (86 page)

Cieza de León claims that at its height Huánuco Pampa was served by 30,000 people. Morris was able to map the foundations of more than 4,000 structures, and on a hill south of the city he found nearly 500 storage units arranged in neat rows.

One of the notable buildings at Huánuco Pampa was an Aklla Wasi that may have housed 200 chosen women. In addition to weaving fine textiles, these women brewed the vast quantities of corn beer with which the Inca entertained representatives of the Chupaychu, Yacha, and other neighboring societies. Thousands of laborers from visiting groups came to reside seasonally at Huánuco Pampa, performing labor for their Inca hosts in return for food and drink.

As for the leaders of the local ethnic groups, they did not become “Inca by privilege” like the Quechua-speaking allies of the Cusco region. The Inca did, however, assign them an intermediate status, somewhere between nobles and commoners.

Three terms for social rank appear in Spanish documents for the region. The word
collana
was used for rulers and important officials who had kinsmen in the Cusco region. The term
cayao
was used for commoners from all non-Inca ethnic groups. A third word,
payan,
was created for people of intermediate status, who had connections both to the collana and cayao by intermarriage or fictive kin relations.

Morris and Covey believe that by turning local leaders into payan, the Inca were responding to a growing need for a stratum of intermediate-level elites who could manage parts of their empire for them. The payan provided the Inca with thousands of workers in return for lavish Inca hospitality. And, like the Kachin chiefs who accepted Shan brides, the payan received collana women in marriage, which raised their prestige.

To be sure, the collana did not look upon the payan as equals. They were willing, however, to flatter the payan, treating them as honored guests and betrothing women to them. The Inca knew that this status-enhancing treatment would obligate the payan to provide them with thousands of cayao workers.

The End of Empire

One of the proud moments of Inca history, as we have seen, was the conquest of the Chanka by Pachacuti Inka Yupanki (1438–1471). In the tradition of Tiwanaku monument capture, Pachacuti took possession of the most important Chanka statue, a sculpture of the first Chanka ruler’s mummy. After Pachacuti’s death this Chanka statue was kept on one of his royal estates, next to his own mummified remains.

Pachacuti was succeeded by his son Topa Inka Yupanki (1471–1493), who became the tenth Inka. He was in turn succeeded by Huayna Capac (1493–1527), the last Inka to rule over a unified empire. It was during this period that Columbus discovered the New World, setting in motion a European colonization that would doom the Inca.

Huayna Capac died near Quito, the northern limit of his empire, leaving behind a bitterly divided realm. Two half brothers, Huascar and Atahualpa, each claimed to be Huayna Capac’s true successor. Huascar managed to get himself installed as emperor, but civil war between the royal siblings eventually broke out.

Atahualpa’s forces invaded Cusco, seeking to kill all nobles loyal to Huascar. Included among the latter were many relatives of Topa Inka Yupanki. Atahualpa’s men hanged countless Huascar supporters and then tracked down Topa Inka Yupanki’s mummy and reduced it to ashes.

The Spaniards arrived in 1532 and quickly took advantage of the civil war. They captured Atahualpa in Cajamarca, determined to ransom him for gold. Despite Atahualpa’s captive status, his supporters overtook and assassinated Huascar. The conquistador Francisco Pizarro then ordered the execution of Atahualpa, leaving the Inca without a ruler.

The Spaniards harvested all the gold and silver objects from the sand layer in Cusco’s Aucaypata and stripped the gold from the Great Ushnu and the Coricancha. They then began to search for the mummies of past Inkas, whose mystique made them a threat to Spanish rule. By 1559 they had located and burned the majority of the royal mummies.

In the logic of the Inca the mummies, huauque statues, and hair/fingernail bundles of rulers were not only alive but continued to advise their heirs, legitimize lower-level officials, and govern their subjects. Their destruction severed the divine chain of command and left the administrative hierarchy with no Level 1.

INEQUALITY IN EMPIRES

The empires described in this book were significantly larger than most kingdoms. One wonders, however, if social inequality in empires was significantly greater than in kingdoms. It seems unlikely that slaves and landless serfs would have noticed much difference.

One new source of inequality in empires was the stripping of autonomy and authority from conquered elites. Empires swallowed up rival kingdoms the way kingdoms had once swallowed up rival rank societies. Many a monarch whose word had been law in his own kingdom was now forced to take orders from an emperor.

Subjugated monarchs responded to their newly created inequality in a variety of ways. In the Basin of Mexico, the ruler of Texcoco went into exile until he could reclaim his throne. In Peru’s Chincha Valley the local lord agreed to joint rule in order to preserve some of his privileges, such as being carried in a litter. Similar promises of joint rule convinced many an ambitious prince from a junior lineage to cooperate with the Inca ruler, if the latter helped him usurp a senior ruler’s position. The kings of Huarco and the Chanka, in contrast, refused to submit to the Inca and had to be defeated militarily.

As powerful as they were, both kings and emperors often had to resort to generosity to get what they wanted. The Aztec are reported to have thrown feasts for the Tlaxcalan nobles, whom they were never able to subdue. Culhuacan overlords provided their Mexica vassals with a prince. The Inca of Huánuco Pampa gained access to Yacha workers by wining and dining their hereditary leaders. So deeply ingrained are the first principles of generosity and reciprocity that even emperors learned to manipulate them.

THE LEGACY OF EARLIER KINGDOMS AND EMPIRES

There is a reason we have emphasized the generation to which each kingdom or empire belonged. Fourth- and fifth-generation kingdoms were not created in the same way as first-generation kingdoms. All later generations of kingdoms and empires were able to borrow strategies and institutions from their predecessors.

The creators of first-generation kingdoms had no template to follow. They did not know that they were creating a new type of society; they simply thought that they were eliminating rivals and adding subordinates. Only later did they discover that they had created a realm so large that they would need new ways to administer it.

Once a template existed, however, there were many alternative routes to the creation of the next kingdom. We doubt that the founders of the first kingdom in each region had as many options, and our suspicions are supported by some remarkable similarities in the way that first-generation states were created.

Archaeologists and social anthropologists sometimes ignore generational differences by lumping together all ancient kingdoms. We hope that in the future they will isolate first-generation kingdoms and investigate them as a special case. Only by doing so will they learn why certain groups of rank societies could be consolidated into kingdoms and others could not.

V

Resisting Inequality

TWENTY-FOUR

Inequality and Natural Law

Our earliest ancestors were all born equal, but the Ice Age had barely thawed when some of them began surrendering bits of equality.

The rise of complex human societies, which began with hereditary rank and peaked with empires, has been compared to hypertrophic growth in biology. Social complexity, however, was not caused by genes. It grew out of perceived differences in life force, virtue, intellectual property, generosity, debt, and prowess in combat.

In biological evolution, population increase is considered a measure of success. One species grows at the expense of others. Either brand-new genes made it more successful, or a change of environment favored its preexisting genes. Social evolution was different. Some of humanity’s largest increases followed the adoption of agriculture, a change that had nothing to do with our genes. The decision to live in permanent villages, the rise of aggressive rank societies, and the creation of expansionist kingdoms were frequently accompanied by population growth.

Despite their obvious differences, one can point to useful analogies between biological and social evolution. Biologists used to rely largely on anatomical similarities and differences to infer how animals had changed over time. Now that we can consult their DNA, we often learn that many outwardly similar species are unrelated, while others that look different have a common ancestor. Many of today’s biologists would say that our knowledge of any species is therefore incomplete until we have worked out its genetic code.

This is the reason we have chosen to focus on social logic. For social anthropologists and archaeologists, the printout of any society’s logic would be analogous to having its DNA profile. When we do not understand society’s changing premises, we are left with unanswered questions. Did states with divine kings arise from rank societies where sacred authority was preeminent? Did secular kingdoms arise from rank societies where military force was uppermost? Or could any type of monarchy arise from any type of rank society?

UPDATING ROUSSEAU

Rousseau held that our ancestors were born without sovereign masters, governments, or laws, and that the only differences among them lay in their strength, agility, and intelligence. Those inequalities were authorized by Natural Law. Most later inequalities resulted not from nature but from the actions of society itself.

Today we suspect that our Ice Age forebears were not wholly without masters or laws. They almost certainly believed themselves to have been the creations of celestial spirits, powerful masters who gave men laws of social behavior. Most likely our ancestors also believed that the first humans had abilities beyond ours. Those “old ones” had taken on the role of betas in society’s dominance hierarchy and, when treated properly, would intercede on their descendants’ behalf with the alphas of the spirit world.

Ice Age people lived on foods whose pursuit tended to keep societies small and mobile. Because fluctuations in the food supply might force some families to forage in the territories of others, our ancestors could not afford to have hostile neighbors. Foragers, we have seen, are not only diplomatic, but actually make neighbors into honorary kinsmen. They do this by creating partners with whom they exchange such things as magical names, food, or gifts. Such partnerships allow one family to host another in times of need, just as if they had been related by blood or marriage.

The logic of small-scale foragers has its own first principles. The following would be typical:

There is an invisible life force within us.

Certain spirits, places, and objects are sacred.

Individuals differ in virtue.

Generosity is one of those virtues.

Older, initiated people tend to be more virtuous than younger, uninitiated people.

Later arrivals in a territory are obliged to defer to earlier arrivals.

Our way of life is inherently superior to that of our neighbors.

Despite the widespread nature of such first principles, most anthropologists would not argue that they are encoded in our genes. Generosity is a widespread principle among hunters and gatherers, yet constant social pressure must be applied to ensure that individuals continue to be generous. Such pressure would not be necessary if there were genes for generosity.

The secondary premises that grew out of the first principles were not as widely shared as the latter. For example, most foragers agree that humans differ in virtue, but they frequently disagree on which specific behaviors make individuals more virtuous. Such variations are the raw material for ethnic diversity, long-term social change, and greater inequality.

Some foragers, for example, considered sharing so important that they declined to store food lest they be accused of hoarding. Such behavior is often associated with immediate-return economic strategies. Other foragers had delayed-return strategies that allowed for drying, smoking, and storing food, and even some modest engineering of the environment. To avoid accusations of hoarding, they threw feasts at which foods were shared.

In some parts of the world delayed-return foraging probably set the stage for agriculture. For its part, feasting conferred increased respect on the host. A commitment to reciprocity meant that unreciprocated generosity could translate into debt. Gift-giving could either keep the playing field level, or be manipulated to achieve the opposite result.

It would be useful to know the circumstances under which such manipulation occurred. A decline in sharing may be indicated by privatized storage units, which archaeologists have detected in Near Eastern villages occupied 8,000 years ago.

In parts of the Ice Age world foragers went beyond exchange and food sharing. The archaeological evidence suggests that some of them created large, permanent groups of people who considered themselves related, whether it was true or not. Early clans may have made use of the templates for patrilineal or matrilineal society that, as we saw earlier, sometimes could be found in the gender makeup of forager camps.

Most clanless foragers worked hard to treat everyone as equals. This ethic usually persisted within one’s clan but did not always extend to other clans. Some clans, for example, felt a sense of intellectual property and sought to keep their rituals secret from others. This need to protect secrets may have inspired the first attempts to have leadership pass from father to son. In other cases Clan A was willing to let Clan B perform one of its rituals in exchange for valuables.

Even clanless foragers have been known to save the bones of deceased relatives. The enhanced importance of the ancestors in clans increased this curation of skeletal parts. Some clanless foragers built sweat houses or bachelors’ huts; clan-based societies sometimes built men’s houses or charnel houses. Such buildings appeared in the Near East 9,000 years ago.