Over the past 15,000 years humans have become more docile allowing groups to forage together and become settled societies (Wade 178). With the art of social societies comes the pressure for the need of a constant food supply. Hunter-gatherers had rarely experienced a surplus of food. They would hunt just enough to feed their immediate family and no more. Now that these groups of hunter-gatherers forged together they were faced with positive predicament of an excess food supply. This surplus could be used for trade with other groups of hunter-gatherers but it also created the need for storage, leadership, distribution and other technicalities. As far as research shows, before the foraged hunter-gatherers began to trade with one another they lived an egalitarian lifestyle. This lifestyle was disrupted by the emergence of archaic states. These archaic states consisted of larger groups of hunter-gatherers that gathered together to form a greater community. The members of the archaic states evolved into a way of thinking and socializing that allowed their society to function with these new roles being disrupting their peaceful homeostasis.
Within the past 5,000 years these groups of hunter-gatherers began to form larger groups known as archaic states. Wade cites that anthropologists Allen Johnson and Timothy Earle believe that these archaic states may have exceeded 100,000 individual societies. However the author Norman Yoffee disagrees with the statements made by Johnson & Earle. Yoffee states that “These myths of the earliest states and their evolution are products of archaeological theory, that attempt to understand a process whose outcome is observed but whose dynamics and details are imperfectly known from the observations” (Yoffee 196). Yoffee does agree with Johnson & Earle that these hunter-gatherer groups shared a cultural system and that these groups appear approximately 5,000 years after the hunter-gatherers. Yoffee states that these small family-sized groups game together and created a society that survived on hunting, domesticated animals, and flourishing agriculture (Yoffee 200). Yoffee deducts that these groups would live in an area until drought, disease or some other natural occurrence caused them to move on and as they did so they would trade such items as obsidian, grain, and in some cases, semi-precious stones (Yoffee 202).
Regardless of why these groups of hunter-gatherers began to trade, the important issue is that they evolved into a homeostasis where they governed themselves, allowed other groups to trade food supplies, tools and other goods. This evolution of society demonstrates the capacity for a , somewhat, chosen evolutionary path.
Works Cited
Allen W. Johnson, Timothy Earle. The Evolution of Human Societies. 2nd ed. USA: Stanford University Press, 2000.
Norman Yoffee. Myths of the Archaic State: Evolution of the Earliest Cities, States and Civilizations. 1st edition ed. USA: Cambraige University Press, 2005. Google ScholarSeptember 15, 2009 <http://books.google.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/books?uid=6821351402528902958>.
Wade, Nicholas. Before the Dawn. USA: Penguine Books, 2007.
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It is interesting to consider the debate about why or how humans evolved into culturally functioning societies, it would seem that the path that was taken is mostly agreed upon. It was this path that people were taking that lead them to cultural societies of trade, creation, etc. It is also interesting to see which things are considered precious to which people. The precious stones discussed, for example, some were not used for survival, but for decoration. So who would decide what is considered "beautiful", then this would develop the hierarchy of who would wear the precious stones, and what they would be worth to others in the sense of trade. This begins the spiral into culture and what would be considered lifestyles in their future.
ReplyDeleteThe length of these transitions are long, and seem to have been so long ago, yet we still base many of our customs on some of these grounds today. Status symbols such as diamonds can still tell us how high up in society someone is, or even how much power they have.
They opened the cultural door thousands of years ago, it will be interesting to see where we go in the thousands of years to come.
I appreciate the evidence your blog provided on the emergence of a class based society as evidenced by jewelry. I think it is interesting to note how this began what is essentially still in place even today in cultures.
ReplyDeleteGood Blog, I feel incline to agree with Yoffee's statement “These myths of the earliest states and their evolution are products of archaeological theory, that attempt to understand a process whose outcome is observed but whose dynamics and details are imperfectly known from the observations”. Archaic states that number in the 100,000's do not seem so archaic when you realize that there are still many cities in present day that do not attain such high numbers. Even with a large surplus in fod it would be difficult to establish such expansive cities. I believe that it would take more then just a surplus in food to sustain these large archaic societies, a surplus in all resources would be necessitated. For example clothes, shelter, tools, and trade goods or currency of some kind would all become high in demand.
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