There
was a time in prehistory when some people began cultivating plants
and other began herding animals. These new forms of survival –
food, clothing and shelter – were developed slowly and more or less
simultaneously, and neither completely excluded the previous practice
of hunting and gathering in the wild. Historic hunter-gatherer
societies in Africa, the Americas, Australia, or Asia have much in
common, whereas herds of livestock and agriculture are incompatible.
The two forms of society had to live apart, and this separation
brought profound cultural differences. While some people roamed the
steppe lands leading and selecting their herds, instead of following
and hunting them, others stayed in place selecting and guarding their
plantations, instead of gathering them haphazardly. The Neolithic is
when humanity stepped out of the environment and began to shape it.
Polished stones and baked pottery are the residues of that mental
transformation. The rest is conjecture.
The
kept herds provided milk, which curdles into cheese or yogurt and can
be dried and preserved. The herds were made up of female animals, an
adult male and a small number of younger ones to insure his
succession when he passed his prime. This is how wild herds function,
but it was accentuated by killing new-born males for meat feasts.
Humans shaped their herds, and the herds in turn influenced their
human masters. Nomadic pastoral societies are polygamous and
patriarchal. And culling new-born (firstborn?) boys may not have been
uncommon.
The
tilled fields provided cereals and legumes, which can be dried and
stored. Plants have flowers, and flowers have one pistil that bears
the fruit and many stamens. They are polyandrous. Polyandry in human
societies has been recorded, but a more general practice seems to
have been the matrilineal transmission of property and titles. It is
suggested in ancient records and legends. Why was Helen so important
that her elopement forced the Achaeans into a long and costly war?
Why did Egyptian monarchs wed their sisters? Why does Oedipus have to
marry the queen, his mother, to become king? And then there is
Malinowski’s careful description of property rights in the
Trobriand Islands a century ago. And Jewishness is said to pass on by
the female lineage (1).
Herdsmen
followed the migratory habits of their flocks, and planters settled
the flood plains of great rivers. And these very different cultures
came into contact. It may have started by the exchange of goods,
cheese for wheat, hides for pots, wool for flax. But, as would often
happen in later ages, the trading turned to raiding. And the raids
ended in conquest. Herdsmen can attack and retreat. Planters can only
defend (2). The fertile valley of Mesopotamia and its cities were
periodically overrun by people coming from the eastern mountains or
the western deserts. And the Nile valley had to contend with
incursions from east, west and south. This meant that the herdsmen’s
culture prevailed and the planter’s world was destroyed, leaving
just threads in mythology.
It
is probable that women started planting crops. They had been doing
most of the gathering, while men did most of the hunting, and they
would have accumulated and transmitted their knowledge of plants. And
women may have stayed to tend the gardens, when men went off on
hunting parties (3). Then the meat from the wild was progressively
replaced by that of domesticated animals, birds, pigs and pond fish.
So men would have learned to participate in the planting. And there
would have been the need for protection from incursions by herdsmen.
Apart from being mobile the herdsmen may have had a technological
advantage. Their peregrinations would have put them in contact with
natural elements that were absent in the flood plains, hard stones
that could be shaped and polished, and later various metals.
The
primeval agricultural societies have not left many archaeological
traces. Some early Sumerian figurines represent hairless men dressed
in long skirts who seem quite benevolent, but they were not the
original inhabitants. The warrior kings came later with the
Accadians, Goutians, Amorites, etc. The herdsmen’s patriarchal and
warlike culture forced itself on the world and has maintained its
rule just about everywhere to the present day. And even women in
power have not yet managed to change anything fundamental. Force is
the only rule to take and keep power and wealth. And the patriarchal
principle moulded all of society. The relationships between fathers
and sons, and between men and women, had to be oppressive and
totalitarian. The oldest son would inherit and prolong the lineage.
For this to happen, he would have to conform to his father’s image
in all aspects, and reproduce them for the following generation.
Fathers were all powerful, and often had the right of life or death
over their children, as in ancient Rome. When all power and most
wealth are transmitted from father to eldest son, younger brothers
have to fend for themselves, and women are reduced to appendages.
They are daughters, sisters, wives and mothers under the dominion of
fathers, brothers, husbands and sons. All this existed to insure the
certainty of a child’s progenitor.
The
herd culture is oppression by force. Might is right. But herds in the
wild only have violent and sometimes deadly confrontations during the
mating season. The rest of the year they live and let live. Humans do
not have that yearly cycle as women are fertile on a monthly basis,
hence their long association with the moon. Men had to exert their
domination all year round. Herdsmen societies kept a constant high
level of violence and lived in fairly isolated units of master, women
and servants (4). Planter societies lived together in villages. This
close proximity meant reducing violence as much as possible to
promote cohabitation. But it made them less able to repulse the
attacks by herdsmen (5).
Violent
force has determined human relationships for millennia, ever since
hierarchical herdsmen imposed their rule on communal planters. This
situation is so ancient that it seems natural and unavoidable.
However, the primordial opposition is being revived between meat
eaters and vegetarians. And raising cattle is such a vast polluting
industry that it is a major contributor to climate disruption and
environmental destruction. And women are claiming and gaining a more
equal role in decision making for all activities. And the hierarchy
of power is increasingly perceived as inappropriate for a common
shared planet. The habit of obedience and voluntary servitude is deep
rooted, and so is government by armed force. But both seem more and
more futile in a world ravaged by meteorological disasters, on the
cliff-edge of financial breakup and locked down by a pandemic. If
humanity is to survive, it will have to invent something different.
Humans will have to change their relationships with one another, with
other living beings and with the natural elements. Time is running
out and the Juggernaut of wealth and power seems as unassailable as
ever. Albeit, there are visible cracks in its financial armour, and
its collapse from overweight seems more likely than a gradual
slimming down to sustainable dimensions. As ever, the future is
shrouded in mystery.
1.
In Genesis XXIV, Abraham sends a servant back to Mesopotamia to fetch
his grand-niece as a wife for his son Isaac. And Jacob goes back to
wed a cousin and ends up with two.
2.
Julius Caesar conquered Gaulle by campaigning in summer, chasing off
village inhabitants and harvesting their crops, leaving them to
starve or surrender. This could not work in Germany as people would
hide in the forests with their cattle and wait things out.
3.
George Catlin described this sort of society during his journey down
the Mississippi in 1832.
4.
The biblical Abraham is surrounded by family members and anonymous
servants, and the pre-biblical Hammurabi “code” found on a stele
divides society into freemen, servants and slaves.
5.
See the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Khaldun
“Perhaps
the most frequently cited observation drawn from Ibn Khaldun's work
is the notion that when a society becomes a great civilization, its
high point is followed by a period of decay. This means that the next
cohesive group that conquers the diminished civilization is, by
comparison, a group of barbarians. Once the barbarians solidify their
control over the conquered society, however, they become attracted to
its more refined aspects, such as literacy and arts, and either
assimilate into or appropriate such cultural practices. Then,
eventually, the former barbarians will be conquered by a new set of
barbarians, who will repeat the process.”
