The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire (87 page)

Even clanless foragers practiced initiation and bride service. In societies with larger social units, such rituals came to include even greater exchanges of valuables, not only between families but also between descent groups. The addition of so many levels of ritual behavior helped escalate the archaeological evidence for art, music, and dance.

In some regions having corporate groups created new logical premises. The alleged difference in virtue between bride-givers and bride-takers is one example. Here is a second case where formerly reciprocal exchanges could be converted to sources of inequality.

Finally, the “us versus them” mentality of clans justified raiding. The principle of social substitutability meant that anyone from another group was fair game. Some raiding parties returned with trophy heads. Others returned with captive women and children, turning them into slaves. The groundwork had been laid for larger-scale war.

What clues lead archaeologists to suspect that a prehistoric society possessed clans or ancestor-based descent groups? The clues are multigenerational cemeteries, wooden palisades or masonry defensive walls, men’s houses, charnel houses, trophy heads, the saving of skulls from burials, and an increase in the circulation of valuables such as those used in bride-price exchange. The first clues in the Nile Valley appeared even before farming and herding had begun. The evidence was strong in the early agricultural villages of the Near East, Mexico, and Peru.

We cannot assume, however, that clanless foragers represent some kind of “original” society. There are hints that some clanless foragers (the Basarwa, for example) may have had descent groups or clans in the past, only to lose them when they were driven into marginal environments. At the same time, societies such as that of the Andaman Islanders show us that even if a group lives in a relatively lush environment, there is no guarantee that it will develop clans. For all these reasons we should probably view clans or descent groups as one of several alternative social networking strategies rather than as an inevitable second stage of foraging society.

BALANCING PERSONAL AMBITION AND THE PUBLIC GOOD

Rousseau considered the replacement of self-respect with self-love an important moment in the creation of inequality. It now seems obvious, however, that both self-respect and self-love were there from the beginning. The tug-of-war between them may have been one of Ice Age society’s most significant logical contradictions.

With the rise of agricultural villages 9,000 years ago in the Near East, 7,000 years ago in Egypt, and 4,000 years ago in Mexico, the environment for self-love had improved. In many parts of the world, however, the adoption of agriculture did not lead immediately to inequality. Lots of societies struck a balance between personal ambition and the public good, and in some regions that balance lasted well into the twentieth century. There are archaeological hints, to be sure, that many of today’s achievement-based societies once flirted with greater inequality. Most of those flirtations, however, ended with a return to egalitarian behavior.

What achievement-based societies excelled at was providing ambitious individuals (those who, in Rousseau’s words, “desired to be thought of as superior”) with acceptable ways of increasing their prestige. Those ways included prowess in raiding or head-taking, skill in entrepreneurial exchange, or sponsorship of increasingly important rituals. While all these paths could lead to renown, prominent individuals were not allowed to become a hereditary elite. They could serve as role models for their children but could not guarantee them the same prestige.

Let us look first at the taking of scalps or heads. Some idealistic anthropologists have chosen to downplay such violence as a path to renown, but it was often celebrated in native memory. “Once we had leaders who lined the walls of our men’s house with enemy skulls,” some tribes lamented, “but now we are reduced to squabbling like girly men.”

An interesting aspect of achievement-based society is the not-infrequent link between raiding and exchange. The tee cycle of the Enga shows us that war could be changed from blood feuds to a means of profiting from war reparations. The escalation of mokas, potlatches, and feasts of merit shows us that competitive exchange could fill the vacuum left by the colonial suppression of raiding.

Exchange, to be sure, is unlikely to produce captives that one can turn into slaves. Sometimes, however, it produces debtors that one can force into servitude. Differences in expertise at accumulating and giving away valuables can also divide communities into Big Men, ordinary men, rubbish men, and “legs.”

One of the most common paths to renown involved climbing a ladder of ritual achievement. A Tewa man could rise from Warm Clown to Fully Made Person. A Mandan woman could rise from Goose society to White Buffalo Cow society. An Angami Naga could rise to the position of holy man. What none of these high achievers could do was bequeath their renown to their children.

Many Americans will find familiar the logic of achievement-based societies. All men are created equal. Work hard, play by the rules, and anyone can grow up to be prominent. If one provides one’s children with privileges they have not really earned, they will be so spoiled that they will get their own reality TV show.

The difference is this: the United States had to fight a Revolutionary War to get rid of hereditary aristocracy and never did figure out how to reduce disparities in wealth. Achievement-based societies, on the other hand, usually pressured all of their members to give away the valuables they had accumulated.

By what date did societies first show signs of achievement-based leadership? Perhaps 9,000 years ago in the Near East, 4,000 years ago in the Andes, and 3,500 years ago in Mexico. And what would be some of the clues? Archaeologists look for the building of men’s houses, either the larger and more inclusive type or the smaller and more exclusive type. They also look for accumulations of trade items that might be used in entrepreneurial exchange. They analyze residences and burials carefully, and unless they find convincing evidence that certain families’ children were entitled to sumptuary goods, they are likely to conclude that any obvious differences in prestige were achieved, not inherited.

Archaeologists examine as many of a society’s villages as they can, looking for any evidence that hamlets were obliged to contribute tribute or labor to a larger village nearby. When no such evidence appears, an achievement-based society is indicated. Archaeologists also try to evaluate any evidence for monument building, with the caveat that an occasional plaza, stone monument, or massive slit-gong might be evidence for achievement rather than hereditary leadership.

How did the old hunter-gatherer logic come to be changed, creating routes to renown? Even foragers considered some individuals more virtuous than others and believed that one could increase one’s virtue over a lifetime. Building on this principle, many village societies created a series of formal steps to increase one’s virtue through the learning of sacred lore.

Another route, using entrepreneurial exchange, was created by manipulating three principles we saw among foragers: (1) Generosity is good; (2) Exchanges of gifts create social bonds; and (3) The farther away one’s trade goods come from, the more impressed one’s peers will be. Some achievement-based societies, such as the Enga, tried to keep exchanges equal, using principles such as “Give one pig and one pig only.” Others, such as the Melpa, decided that giving one’s neighbors more pigs than they could repay made one more generous (and hence more virtuous) than they.

Once the latter principle was accepted, embarrassing one’s rivals with spectacular gifts became an acceptable path to renown. An unanticipated consequence of competitive exchange was that whole families and clans might be pressured into bankrolling an aspiring Big Man. If he were defeated by a rival, they could kiss their investment good-bye.

The loss of face created by asymmetrical exchange could lead to blood feuds, and blood feuds could increase the scalping and head-hunting. Many societies believed that the taking of a head could add to one’s life force. Leading warriors into combat, counting coup, or returning with captives or body parts thus became another route to prestige.

Achievement-based societies had great stability. At various times and places in the ancient world, however, self-love persisted until a hereditary elite arose. We have seen that this phenomenon was not the inevitable outcome of population growth, intensive agriculture, or climatic improvement, even though all those factors could create a favorable environment for inequality. The key process involved one group of human agents battling for greater privilege, while other agents resisted with all the strength they could muster.

Even when one segment of society succeeded in achieving elite status, the struggle was not necessarily over. Some societies, such as the Kachin and the Konyak Naga, cycled between hereditary rank and achievement-based society for decades.

Archaeologists have proposed several scenarios for the creation of hereditary rank. Most take as their starting point a society that already had a history of achieved inequality, but we do not consider this a prerequisite. At least a few societies might have gone from egalitarian to ranked through the use of debt slavery, without spending much time in a phase of achievement-based villages. If that is the case, it will one day be confirmed by archaeologists.

In those cases where rank society did develop out of achievement-based society, there were many preexisting inequities that could serve as raw material. Included were the differences in prestige between Big Men and rubbish men; between people who had climbed the ritual ladder and those who had not; between the clan that arrived first and everyone else; and between the man chosen for success by a demon and lesser men.

Another strategy for achieving rank was the aforementioned use of debt, which turned needy clan members into servants and neighbors into slaves. Debt could result from exorbitant bride-price, loans to aspiring Big Men, excessive war reparations, or the desperate cries of impoverished kinsmen. It was a route built on the principle that failure to repay a gift or loan made one less virtuous.

One of the interesting facts of hereditary rank was that it could be created even by hunters and gatherers such as the Nootka. Neither slavery nor aristocracy, in other words, had to wait until agriculture had arisen.

What are the archaeological clues for the appearance of rank society? That is not as easy a question as it sounds, because rank came in so many forms. One clan might be ranked above others. One lineage within each clan might be considered a chiefly lineage. There might be a continuum of rank, based on genealogical distance from the chief. There might be stepwise gradations of nobility, a landed gentry, and commoners. And, as if this diversity were not enough, there is also Renfrew’s continuum from individualizing to group-oriented rank societies.

Archaeologists should thank their lucky stars for individualizing rank societies, the ones in which the children of the elite get buried with sumptuary goods, and the chief’s corpse gets bundled, smoked, or surrounded by sacrificed servants. They should also be grateful for all the symbolically charged pottery, goldwork, and jade exchanged by noble families. At the regional level, they should be thankful for archaeological evidence that chiefly centers grew by attracting new followers, or were surrounded by satellite villages to whom they sent brides.

In rank societies, temples dedicated to celestial spirits often replaced the men’s house. Even in group-oriented rank societies, where elites generally refrained from flamboyant displays, chiefly families often lived in bigger houses with greater storage facilities and more evidence of trade goods.

Rank clearly represents a loss of equality, but let us play the devil’s advocate. Was rank really such a bad thing? Don’t lots of species have a dominance hierarchy, and doesn’t it provide stability to their society? In fact, don’t our closest primate relatives have pecking orders?

They do, but with an important difference. It is not predestined from the moment of birth that a given chimpanzee will become an alpha or a beta. Having an alpha parent may increase the likelihood, but in the end an individual’s position in the hierarchy is the result of his or her interactions with other individuals. And any chimp’s position can rise or fall over time.

Human rank societies are different. The child of great Ang parents is born to be a great Ang, no matter how short of talent he or she may be. The child of commoner parents will never become a great Ang, no matter how clever he or she is. The ability to negotiate one’s position in rank society is much more limited than in a chimpanzee troop.

There are confrontational interactions in rank society, to be sure, but they are usually between rivals of high rank. Chiefly polygamy leads to situations in which a number of heirs have roughly similar ranks. Some of the bitterest competition is between noble siblings, half siblings, and first cousins.

Another set of violent confrontations involves territorial expansion. Both chimpanzee troops and chiefly human societies like to take territory away from their neighbors. Both also prefer ambushes and numerical superiority. Some aggressive chiefs, however, dare to take on larger enemy forces if they feel that their military tactics are superior. A number of Shaka’s greatest victories came when his troops were outnumbered.

Among rank societies, war became a tool for chiefly aggrandizement. When that aggrandizement simply meant the acquisition of titles (as in parts of Samoa), it did not necessarily change the basic principles of society. When aggrandizement meant the acquisition of land (as in Madagascar and Hawai’i), it could produce territories too large for the management principles of rank society. That set the stage for the political hierarchy characteristic of kingdoms.

Many of the earliest kings, in the course of changing the way they administered their territories, created new strategies. Instead of continuing to move his residence so that all provinces could share in his support, the Hawai’ian king appointed a trusted governor for each province. Instead of letting each ethnic group provide its own age regiments, Shaka created state-level regiments that were loyal only to him. Instead of appointing their brothers to administer parts of their realm, some Egyptian kings chose talented commoners who were less likely to usurp the throne.