D Cxitx I- (rtr/l\ . , P1u1a,ti' z 6 4 cUNS, cERMS, AND STEEL Tai€r>D 6ii/v't 'iERnt, 9TLzt- diffusion, and onsetof food productionexerred on the riseof technorogy becameexaggerated, becausetechnorogy catalyzes itserf. Eurasia,s consid- erableinitial advantagethereby was rranslated into a hugelead as of e.o. CHAPTER 14 1492-f.or reasons of Eurasia'sdistinctive geography rather than of dis- tinctive human intellect.The New Guineanswhom I know includeporen- tial Edisons. But they directed their ingenuity toward technorogical problems appropriateto their situations:the problemsof survivingwith- out any importeditems in the New Guineajungle, rarher than the problem of inventingphonographs. FnoM EcALrrARrANrsM TO KTEPTOCRACY T I N 1979, wutlE r wAs FLyrNc vrrH MrssroNARyFRTENDS I. ou., a remoteswamp-filled basin of New Guinea,I noticeda few huts many miles apart. The pilot explainedto me that, somewherein that muddy expansebelow us, a group of Indonesiancrocodile hunters had recentlycome acrossa group of New Guineanomads. Both groupshad panicked,and the encounterhad endedwith the Indonesiansshooting sev- eral of the nomads. My missionaryfriends guessed that the nomadsbelonged to an uncon- tacted group called the Fayu, known to the outside world only through accountsby their terrified neighbors,a missionizedgroup of erstwhile nomadscalled the Kirikiri. First contactsbetween outsiders and New Guineagroups are alwayspotentially dangerous, but this beginningwas especiallyinauspicious. Nevertheless, my friendDoug flew in by helicopter to try to establishfriendly relationswith the Fayu.He returned,alive but shaken,to tell a remarkablestory. It turned out that the Fayu normally lived as singlefamilies, scaffered throughthe swampand coming together once or twiceeach year to negoti- ate exchangesof brides.Doug's visit coincidedwith sucha gathering,of a few dozenFayu, To us, a few dozenpeople constitute a small,ordinary gathering,but to the Fayu it was a rare, frighteningevent. Murderers sud- z 6 6 . GUNs, GERMs. AND sTEEL FROM EGALITARIANISM TO KLEPTOCRACY ' z 6 7 denly found themselvesface-to-face with their victim's relatives.For exam- world. The combination of government and religion has thus functioned, ple, one Fayu man spotted the man who had killed his father. The son together with germs, writing, and technology, as one of the four main sets raised his ax and rushed at the murderer but was wrestled to the ground of proximate agents leading to history's broadest pattern. How did gov- by friends; then the murderer came at the prostrate son with an ax and ernment and religion arise? was also wrestled down. Both men were held, screaming in rage, until they seemedsufficiently exhausted ro be released.Other men periodically shouted insults at each other, shook with anger and frustration, and Fo"u BANDS eNp modern statesrepresent opposite extremes along the pounded the ground with their axes.That tension continued for the several spectrum of human societies.Modern American society and the Fayu dif- days of the gathering, while Doug prayed that the visit would not end in fer in the presenc€or absenceof a professionalpolice force, cities, money' violence. distinctions between rich and poor, and many other political, economic, The Fayu consist of about 400 hunter-gatherers,divided into four clans and social institutions. Did all of those institutions arise together, or did and wandering over a few hundred square miles. According to their own some arise before others?We can infer the answer to this question by com- account, they had formerly numbered about 2,000, but their population paring modern societiesat different levels of organization, by examining had been greatly reduced as a result of Fayu killing Fayu. They lacked wntt€n accounts or archaeological evidenceabout past societies,and by political and social mechanisms, which we take for granted, to achieve observing how a society'sinstirutions change over time. peaceful resolution of serious disputes. Eventually, as a result of Doug's Cultural anthropologists attempting to describethe diversiry of human visit, one group of Fayu invited a courageous husband-and-wife mission- societiesoften divide them into as many as half a dozen categories.Any ary couple to live with them. The couple has now resided there for a dozen such attempt to define stagesof any evolutionary or developmentalcontin- years and gradually persuaded the Fayu ro renounce violence. The Fayu uum-whether of musical styles, human life stages,or human societies- are thereby being brought into the modern world, where they face an is doubly doomed to imperfection. First, becauseeach stagegrows out of uncertain future. some previous stage,the lines of demarcation are inevitably arbitrary. (For Many other previously uncontacted groups of New Guineansand Ama- example, \s a 1.9-year-oldperson an adolescentor a young adult?) Second, zonian Indians have similarly owed to missionaries their incorporation developmental sequencesare not invariant, so examples pigeonholed into modern society. After the missionaries come teachers and doctors, under the same stage are inevitably heterogeneous.(Brahms and Liszt bureaucrats and soldiers. The spreadsof governmenr and of religion have would turn in their graves to know that they are now grouped together thus been linked to each other throughout recorded history, whether the as composersof the romantic period.) Nevertheless,arbitrarily delineated spread has been peaceful (as eventually with the Fayu) or by force. In the stagesprovide a useful shorthand for discussingthe diversity of music and latter caseit is often government that organizesthe conquest, and religion of human societies,provided one bears in mind the above caveats'In that that justifies it. \7hile nomads and tribespeople occasionally defeat orga- spirit, we shall use a simple classification based on just four categories- nized governments and religions, the trend over the past 13,000 years has band, tribe, chiefdom,and state(see Table 14.1)-to understandsocieties' been for the nomads and tribespeople to lose. Bands are the tiniest societies,consisting typically of 5 to 80 people, At the end of the last Ice Age, much of the world's population lived in most or all of them closerelatives by birth or by marriage. In effect,a band societiessimilar to that of the Fayu today, and no people then lived in a is an extended family or several related extended families. Today, bands much more complex sociery.As recently as A.D. 1500, lessthan 20 percent still living autonomously are almost confined to the most remote parts of of the world's land area was marked off by boundaries into statesrun by New Guinea and Amazonia, but within modern times there were many bureaucrats and governed by laws. TodaS all land except Antarctica's is others that have only recently fallen under state control or been assimi- so divided. Descendantsof those societiesthat achieved centralized gov- lated or exterminated.They include many or most African Pygmies,south- ernment and organized religion earliest ended up dominating the modern ern African San hunter-gatherers (so-called Bushmen), Aboriginal 268 . GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL . FROM EGALITARIANISM TO KLEPTOCRACY z 6 9 Tanu r4.r Typesof Societies Band Tibe Chiefdom State Band Tibe Chiefdotn State Membership Religion Number of dozens hundreds thousands people over50,000 Justifiesklepto- yes yes+no cracy? Settlement nomadic fixedr 1 fixed: 1 or more fixed: many pattern Economy village villages villages + and cities Food production no nq+|€S yes rntensrve intensive Basisof relation- kin kin-based classand resi- class Division of labor no no n9+/€S yes ships and clans dence Exchanges reciprocal reciprocal redistributive redistribu- 1 residence Ethnicities and I 1 1 1 ("tribute" ) tive languages or more ("taxes" ) Government Control of land band clan chief various Decision making, "egalitarian' "egalitarian" centralized, centralized Society leadership or hereditary Stratified no no yes,by kin yes,not big-man by kin Bureaucracy none none none, or 1 or many levels Slavery no no small-scale large-scale 2 levels Luxury goods no no yes yes Monopoly of no no yes yes for elite force and Public architec- no no ,rq+yeS yes information ture Conflict resolu- informal informal centralized laws, judges Indigenouslit- no no no often tion etacy Hierarchy of no no nO+para_ capital settlement mount village A horizontalarrow indicatesthat the anribute variesbetween less and more complexsocie- ties of that rype. Australians,Eskimos (Inuit), and Indians of someresource-poor areas of "egalitarian":there is no formalizedsocial stratification into upper and the Americassuch as Tierra del Fuego and the northernboreal forests. AIr lower classes,no formalizedor hereditaryleadership, and no formalized those modern bandsare or were nomadic hunter-gatherersrather than monopoliesof information and decision making. However, the term settledfood producers.probabry all humans lived in bandsuntil at least "egalitarian"should not betaken to meanthat all bandmembers are equal 40,000 yearsago, and most still did as recentlyas 11,000years ago. in prestigeand contributeequally to decisions.Rather, the term merely Bandslack many institutions that we take for grantedin our oiun ,o.i- meansthat any band "leadership"is informaland acquiredthrough quali- ery' They haveno permanentsingre base of residence.The band,sland is tiessuch as personality,strength, intelligence, and fightingskills. usedjointly by the whole group' instead of beingpartitioned among