From Autonomous Villages to the State: An Irresistible Trend in the Grand Sweep of Human History The 53rd Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture

Robert Carneiro, Ph.D. Curator of Introduction by Warren Robbins, founder that he was selected to be the speaker this of the Robbins Center for Cross Cultural evening. I don’t believe in people taking lots of , Communication: time on introductions of speakers, so I will give American Museum him all the time that he deserves. Bob … of Natural History The Center for Cross Cultural Communication is just a fancy name for general semantics. But Robert Carneiro (speaking without notes): as the predecessor for the museum, it enabled me to put together a board of advisors which Thank you very much Warren. included people like Margaret Mead, Joseph As far as I know, Leslie White never cited Campbell, Leslie White, and Ben Shahn, Korzybski in print, but the two had a very great people from all the various social sciences and interest in the same thing, namely words. the arts. That was the platform from which I was White worked on what underlies language, the able to launch the Museum of African Art, which symbol. He wrote an article in 1939 titled “The I then turned over after fifteen years to the Symbol: The Origin and Basis of Human Smithsonian, relieving me of various responsi- Behavior.” [See page 65] White was clear in bilities so I could come down here and partici- his definition of a symbol: something in which pate in something like this [lecture] this evening. meaning does not inhere, but is assigned to it It is a pleasure for me to do so because arbitrarily by those who use it. White saw the Robert Carneiro and I were classmates at the symbol as the means by which human beings University of Michigan years and years ago. But were able to communicate effectively and we didn’t really know each other. We lived in the ultimately erect the structure that we know of same residence hall and were peripherally as the state. His view of words was thus aware of each other’s existence, but we didn’t essentially positive, constructive. chum around together. I wish we had. Korzybski, on the other hand, often Carneiro was certainly a product of the looked at the negative side of words, pointing University of Michigan. At this time, Harvard is to the fact that people often thought of words beginning to be called the Michigan of the east. as things in and of themselves and didn’t (laughter) I was testing that out because that’s a realize they were only symbols. A lot of the standard joke in Ann Arbor, so I wanted to see mental difficulties that people get themselves what the response would be in New York City. into, he said, are the result of this failure to In any case, Bob has B.A. and M.A. see the symbol for what it is. degrees, and a Ph.D., in anthropology. Well, the If you look in the back at the index of first one was in political science, but he soon Science and Sanity, you will not find the word learned better and ended up as a cultural evolution, but you will find the word or the anthropologist in which capacity we know him term time-binding. In fact, here is how and know him well, and he’s known very well Korzybski defined it: “Human beings differ within the institution in which he is speaking from animals in the fact that each generation tonight. He has had a very broad academic can start where the former generation left career, which I won’t recount. He’s had many off.” Translating this into anthropological assignments and field trips overseas. terminology, time-binding is what? It is He has written on a wide variety of cumulation. Anthropologists are tired of subjects—the ones that you might expect from repeating that “culture is cumulative.” such a scholar, but even one on baseball. He Cumulation is simply the addition of the new has written many, many monographs on a along with the retention of the old. This, of variety of subjects. Some of that will be reflected, course, is one of the major features of I’m sure, in what he has to say this evening. evolution; that is, it consists of building larger When the call went out for and more complex structures by taking the recommendations for a speaker for this year’s elemental pieces of it, building them up, and Korzybski lecture, I submitted his name with aggregating them. Evolution can then be seen great pleasure, and now with great gratification as consisting largely of this cumulation of

From Villages to the State 15 things. And that is true of political evolution as Here, I thought, we had something to work well as evolution of other aspects of culture. with. From the point of view of political When I first went into the field among the development, the outstanding feature of Kuikuru in central Brazil in 1953, if there was Amazonia is that it consists of an area of a recognized theory of the origin of state at extensive, unbounded, agricultural land. all, it was what I call the “automatic” theory Almost any part of the forest can be felled and which had been more or less proposed by agricultural crops, especially manioc, can be Old World archeologists like V. Gordon grown very successfully. That meant that when Childe and Leonard Woolley. According to there was warfare between adjacent villages, this theory, once agriculture came on the the defeated villages need not stay in place scene about 10,000 years ago, humans and be subjugated by the victor, but could flee could produce a surplus of food above to a safer location and establish a new village subsistence needs. Thus individuals were there just about as well as before. able to be divorced from primary food Population growth, of course, was production and began specializing in occurring in both areas, slowly and gradually. Until we had ceramics, weaving, metallurgy, the It operated by a process whereby individual priesthood, and so on. Somehow, villages were growing to a certain size and agriculture, automatically (the steps were not really then splitting, growing and splitting, so what it was spelled out), this gave rise to the state. was occurring was the proliferation of villages. Well, the group that I worked with in But in Amazonia, villages spaced themselves impossible to central Brazil, the Kuikuru, practiced slash- out, at arm’s length, so to speak, because expect the and-burn agriculture, with manioc as its there was plenty of land. staple crop. Kuikuru agriculture turned out to If we look at the coast of Peru, where state to be more productive per unit of land or per Andean states first arose, what we see is arise. unit of labor than the agriculture of the Inca. something quite different. There are several Yet, whereas the Kuikuru lived in a simple dozen short rivers that come down from the village of about 145 people, completely Andes and flow into the Pacific. These rivers autonomous politically, the Inca comprised a flow through probably the world’s driest desert. vast empire of some ten million people over a So there were river valleys with very fertile soil very large area with a very complex culture close to the river, and then sheer desert on but with a system of agriculture that was less either side. At the headwaters, there were productive than that of the Kuikuru. mountains, at the other end of the river, the Obviously, the automatic theory was wrong, sea, and on either side, desert. Now, the or at least incomplete. Sure, agriculture was agricultural villages that existed there necessary for the state to come into being. autonomously, from an early period, engaged Until we had agriculture, it was impossible to in warfare from time to time, just as expect the state to arise. But something more Amazonian villages did. The results, however, than that had to be involved. What was it? were strikingly different. One of the ingredients I thought was at At first, as long as there was enough land, the base of the formation of states, beginning what occurred was a process of fight and flight. with simple autonomous villages, was But it wasn’t long before these villages found warfare. In those days, anthropologists themselves with no more room for expansion, tended to look askance at warfare as having and so defeated villages had to stay put and be played a constructive role. War, after all, was subjugated by the victorious one. This meant nasty and unpalatable. For instance, in those that for the first time, we see the creation of days, it was thought that the Maya had multi-village . The was the developed completely without warfare, and first supra-village form of political organization you frequently found statements about the ever to occur in the world. “peaceful” Maya. This, of course, has since Human culture goes back perhaps two been disproved, first by the discovery of the million years, and yet it wasn’t until around Bonampak murals in southern Mexico, but 5000 B.C. in Mesopotamia that we get, for the since then by a lot more epigraphic and other first time, multi-village aggregates. In the evidence of warfare. So warfare was involved various valleys along the coast of Peru, the in . But warfare was prevalent first small chiefdoms were emerging, although in Amazonia, too, and yet had not given rise somewhat later. They continued to grow. to the state, as it had in Peru. Population pressure on the land continued, but What was the difference between the two then competition for the land was no longer areas? Was it something environmental? between autonomous villages. Now it was

16 GSB 72: 2005 between chiefdoms. As the process continued, example, that on Tahiti and Hawaii states, or we find the stronger chiefdoms defeating the something very close to states, had emerged. weaker ones until eventually valley-wide The circumscription theory seemed to kingdoms were formed. They did not form in answer the call pretty well in explaining how every valley. In some valleys they evolved states arose. But one is always looking for faster and further than in others. exceptions to rules; exceptions may suggest But basically, small states were able to modifications which will then allow you to emerge when chiefdom conquered chiefdom broaden the theory and explain more cases. and grew in size and power in several of these Going back to the New World, let us look valleys. The essential feature fostering state at the Maya and the Olmec of Guatemala formation, then, was that these valleys were and southern Mexico. Maya states, even circumscribed environmentally. Comparing though relatively small, emerged here, too. Amazonia and Peru then, we find in the latter Among the Olmec, even the specialists these very sharp environmental gradients that themselves aren’t sure whether they were seemed to make all the difference. Simple big chiefdoms or small states. The Maya and ... one is autonomous villages persisted in Amazonia, Olmec habitats were both areas where always whereas chiefdoms or states emerged along political envelopment had proceeded well the coast of Peru. beyond autonomous villages. Yet they were looking for When you have a theory, the first thing you areas that were not environmentally exceptions want to do is to test it against other cases than circumscribed. Can we make some the one on which you based it. So I looked modification of the theory to encompass to rules further north, looking at the Valley of Mexico, these cases? What must be added to the because where we know a state had emerged with environmental circumscription theory to make Teotihuacán as its capital. it work here? I think two additional factors are exceptions Sure enough, the Valley of Mexico is neatly required. One is resource concentration and will perhaps circumscribed, a large bowl with mountains all the other, social circumscription. around. Looking at Oaxaca in southern Mexico, Resource concentration can be said to suggest you find the same thing, a circumscribed valley apply to an area where food resources are modifications where a state also arose. So far, so good, but available in much greater quantities than in ... what about other parts of the world? surrounding areas. So populations are Let’s look at the Old World. You have the attracted to these areas and help create the Valley of the Nile—again nicely circumscribed, population density that stimulates warfare. sharp deserts on either side of the Nile hem- To give some examples of this condition, ming it in. The Tigris and Euphrates reveal let us take the Amazon River in South America much the same thing. The Indus Valley in and the Mississippi River in North America. Northwest India was likewise a river with desert The Amazon particularly is blessed with an on both sides. abundance of many kinds of fishes, indeed, The Yellow River in China seemed at first to almost an overabundance of them. It also has be an exception. But as I learned more about it turtles and manatees in profusion. It was thus later, I realized that here, too, there was a region that drew people to its banks even environmental circumscription. The Chinese state before agriculture entered Amazonia. first arose in the area around the inverted “T” When agriculture did come in, the where the Wei River flows eastward into the big bend of the Yellow River. Some of you who are Amazon became a doubly favored habitat for Chinese scholars may point out that the famous human settlement. In addition to all the Shang civilization was located not here but at the riverine food resources, there was along its lower end of the Yellow River. That was true banks what Brazilians call várzea. This is the because the factors most conducive to the rise of land on either side of a large river that floods the state initially aren’t necessarily those that are annually, depositing on it a layer of silt which best suited for its further development. The replenishes the fertility of the soil. Not only Chinese state first emerged in that inverted “T” of does this soil yield bountifully initially, the the Wei and Yellow Rivers. Then later, it flour- naturally increased soil fertility year after year ished in the lower part of the Yellow River, where, makes it unnecessary to have to fallow it. being larger and more fertile, conditions were It was a result of this combination of more conducive to the growth of civilization. factors that drew populations to the Amazon. Let’s go a little farther afield to Polynesia. Várzea agriculture served to increase the There is nothing more sharply circumscribed size and density of riverine populations and than an island. Accordingly, we find, for

From Villages to the State 17 led to the rise of large and powerful chief- villages. The island was small enough so that doms all along the length of the Amazon. it became unified into a chiefdom rather easily. In this case, resource concentration led to A chiefdom is defined as a political unit in social circumscription. Thus, when warfare which there is a who has occurred, defeated villages could not readily permanent control over all the villages. move elsewhere because they were surrounded Northern Kiriwina in the Trobiand Islands, by other villages further back along the river. where Bronislaw Malinowski did his field work, The ensuing warfare led to the aggregation of was a slightly larger simple chiefdom with villages into chiefdoms. seventeen villages under the paramount chief. A good analogy is provided by boiling The area where chiefdoms were first water. You can boil water in an open pot, but studied intensively was Polynesia, but it soon it boils much faster in a pressure cooker. In became recognized that an even better area for the one case nothing really encloses the the study of chiefdoms was the southeastern water; in the other, the water is completely U.S. Here there was not only good ethno- contained—circumscribed—by a pot. historical evidence of chiefdoms, but there was If you look at where the world’s states good archeological evidence of them, too. In first arose, it was in areas of circumscribed fact, today more studies of chiefdoms are agricultural lands. Among the Mayans in carried out in the southeastern U.S. than Guatemala, the Olmec in southern Mexico, anywhere else in the world. West Africa, and Europe, where states also The archeologists who have worked there arose, they emerged later. Wherever social tend to divide chiefdoms into two types: simple circumscription occurred, but was not com- chiefdoms and complex chiefdoms. Simple bined with environmental circumscription, the chiefdoms can be described as having just process was similar but simply took longer. one layer of political organization above that of Without sharp, natural boundaries, the area the village, with a paramount chief at its head. “leaked,” you might say. Defeated villages If the process I described above had some flexibility in moving out. Therefore, continues, stronger chiefdoms conquer and it took longer before social circumscription incorporate weaker ones, erecting chiefdoms grew tight enough to give rise to chiefdoms that have an additional layer of political and, in some cases, to states. structure above the villages. They may be I’ll offer one more example of the effect of called districts, which then weld together to geographical differences on political form larger three-tiered chiefdoms. These evolution. The oldest state in Europe, using larger chiefdoms are called complex “Europe” a little broadly, is Crete, the Minoan chiefdoms by Southeastern archeologists, but civilization of which was in existence by I prefer to call them compound chiefdoms. around 2000 B.C. At this time, there were no Complex can refer to anything above simple. states on the mainland of Europe. Why not? Compound gives a better idea of how this And why was there on Crete? Crete was a process operates, such as in the case of tightly circumscribed island. It was not so chemical compounds in which atoms or large that it could not be readily unified molecules are compounding into larger, more politically, as was the case with Sicily and inclusive, more complex units. Sardinia, which were larger and took much In the Southeast, few simple chiefdoms longer to unify. At the same time, though, were left when Europeans arrived because Crete was large enough and had a autonomous villages had been absorbed into population of sufficient size to allow a simple chiefdoms, and simple were absorbed complex type of socio-political organization, into larger, stronger ones. Simple chiefdoms characteristic of a state, to develop. were thus at the mercy of larger compound So far, I’ve cited the occurrence of chiefdoms. Compound chiefdoms were almost chiefdoms in Peru as a stage in the develop- the only ones left in the Southeast, at the time ment from autonomous villages to the state. the Spaniards arrived. But I haven’t gone into detail about the However, there was always a problem with process involved in going from a chiefdom to compound chiefdoms. That problem is best a state. I think it’s important to do so now. typified by the compound chiefdom of Coosa, At the bottom of the sequence, we have located in northern Georgia, which was one of what are generally called simple chiefdoms, the largest chiefdoms in the Southeast when an example of which would be Futuna in DeSoto and his men entered in the early to Polynesia, which consisted of only about ten mid-1500s.

18 GSB 72: 2005 DeSoto had visited the town of Coosa, the I’ll skip over it lightly. Larger chiefdoms capital of this chiefdom, around 1542. Then in typically had a number of specialists, but no 1560, a Spanish commander named Juan real bureaucracy. In time, specialists became Pardo visited Coosa again. Compound quite numerous. For instance, many African chiefdoms are structurally weak since when kingdoms took pride in the number of dif- they are first created, the paramount chief ferent kinds of specialists they possessed. tends to retain in power the lower chieftains The kingdom of Buganda went so far as to he has conquered, because, for the sake of have a keeper of the royal umbilical cord! continuity, it is more convenient to keep them Lots of other lesser officials also contributed in office than to remove them. to the machinery and complexity of the state. But this creates a problem. These lesser As kingdoms continued to evolve, they chieftains, after all, were conquered by became progressively more institutional. In- stronger ones, thus they did not submit very stead of having individual specialists, political willingly. Accordingly, they are always looking bureaus developed. Ancient Egypt had a for an opportunity to break away from the ministry of agriculture, a ministry of war, a stronger paramount chieftain. ministry of commerce, and so on. We That is exactly what had happened in understand the process of state elaboration Coosa when Juan Pardo arrived. One of the better than we do state formation because we From half a smaller subjugated chiefdoms decided to stop have a lot more historical information about it. paying the required tribute and broke away Let me also say ... I once estimated that million in instead. Coosa mounted a punitive expedition around 1500 B.C., the largest number of 1500 B.C., to bring them back in line. Chief Coosa asked autonomous political units that have ever the Spaniards if they would like to help him existed were then scattered around the globe. the number bring the dissident back into the fold, and the There were probably in the neighborhood of of political Spaniards were happy to oblige. half a million of them. Most of them, of course, units is now This incident points out very neatly the consisted of autonomous villages. structural weakness in a compound chiefdom. From that time on, although the number down to 193. But, how is this weakness to be overcome? of autonomous villages kept increasing by The answer may be found in the chiefdom of growing and splitting, still they were being Powhatan in Tidewater Virginia, which was in engulfed by larger political units at a faster existence half a century later when John rate than they were being created. The net Smith arrived. Powhatan was a rather effect was that over the years, from 1500 extensive chiefdom comprising 163 villages. It B.C. to the present, there has been a was a recently created chiefdom, though, diminution in the number of autonomous having been begun by Powhatan’s father. political units, a process that has been When chiefdoms arise, the paramount taking place almost irresistibly. The number chief comes to have considerable power and of political units in the world has decreased, begins to accumulate the good things of life, while their size has increased. From half a among which are women. Thus Powhatan’s million in 1500 B.C., the number of father had a number of wives, which meant he autonomous political units is now down to had a substantial number of children. When he 193. came to power, Powhatan thus had a number The question thus arises: what does this of brothers and half-brothers. Moreover, since portend for the future? What is the ultimate he was far along in life when the English end of this trend? Clearly, it would be the arrived, he himself had a number of wives and political unification of the world. a good many children. With all these brothers, How is this result to come about, if it is? Will half-brothers, and sons as a ready pool, he it be by the same process that has led to the decided to remove his lesser chieftains and increase in the size of political units in the past, replace them with his own kin, men who could namely, by defeat and conquest of smaller, be counted on to be more loyal to him than the weaker states by stronger ones? Or, will it come ones they succeeded. This move consolidated about by some new process in which the structure of the chiefdom, and for that autonomous political units voluntarily surrender reason I decided to introduce the term their sovereignty in some higher interest? consolidated chiefdom to refer to the stage That’s a subject for the future and not above the compound chiefdom. something I’m going to venture onto here. If How societies went from a consolidated you’re interested, come around tomorrow chiefdom to a state is not part of my story so and you will hear the future being explored.

From Villages to the State 19 April 23, 2005 Colloquium: “Envisioning the Emerging Future”

9:00 Welcome — Steve Stockdale, Executive Director

“Understanding W.I.G.O. to Influence the Future” — Martin H. Levinson, former Director of PROJECT SHARE, NYC Public Schools; Katherine Liepe-Levinson, Muse Educational Resources

“The Future of Consciousness” — Lance Strate, Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies, Fordham University

“Structures and Rhythms” — Milton Dawes, Ambassador-at-Large, Inst. of General Semantics

11:30 Lunch

1:00 “Integrating Non-verbal with Verbal Processes in Consciousness” — Lloyd Gilden, President, Lifwynn Foundation for Social Research

“The Little Big Blender: How the cell phone integrates the digital and the physical every- where” — Paul Levinson, Chair, Communi- cation and Media Studies, Fordham University

PANEL: “Where are we going as a species?”

Roben Torosyan – Moderator, Assistant Director, Center for Academic Excellence, Fairfield University

Warren Robbins, Robbins Center for Cross- Cultural Communications

Milton Dawes

Allen Flagg, President, New York Society for General Semantics

Andrea Johnson, President, Institute of General Semantics

“Developing a Sensitivity to Rhythm” — Milton Dawes

4:00 Adjourn

20 GSB 72: 2005 An Interview with Robert Carneiro Gregg Hoffmann Robert Carneiro sat down with IGS Publications Coordinator Gregg Hoffmann to talk about general semantics, his work in anthropology, and where that field is heading. Hoffmann: How did you first become aware representative parliament. Tribal organizations do of general semantics? still exist there. You have three separate states Carneiro: I read Stuart Chase’s The Tyranny really in Iraq, with the Kurds, Sunnis, and of Words when I was a sophomore at the Shiites. University of Michigan, I believe. This was Afghanistan might be even a better not part of a course assignment at all. It example. We talk about paramount might have been through a book club I was chieftains. Well, in that country, warlords still in, or I just came across it. rule territories in the rural areas. Two things at that time had dramatic When political and ethnic units are effects on my thinking: Chase’s book and an taken over, they tend to resent being introductory sociology course I took. The fact incorporated into a larger political unit and that words were not the things in themselves, try to break away. but symbols that represented things, had a Hoffmann: Where else do you see this profound effect on me. The confusion that theory playing out? can be caused when people do take words Carneiro: In Africa, states were formed by as the things really struck me. Words were colonial powers that included a variety of abstractions of things, not the things in , some of which were enemies to themselves. each other, and that led to internal conflict. Hoffmann: You also were greatly affected by Nigeria is an example. anthropologist Leslie White, weren’t you? Hoffmann: What about modern Carneiro: I actually took a course from him as technology and the concept of the global village? Robert Carneiro a sophomore, but it didn’t affect me that much. Can anthropology address that? My senior year I took his courses on the Carneiro: Yes, it might not be something I want to Evolution of Culture and the Mind of Primitive study, but there are people studying globalization Man. I had been a political science major, but and world systems theory. I think technology White’s courses had a great impact on me. I creates new cultures. For instance, an intellectual also was taking a history of political theory in New York might have more in common with an course at the time. The contrast between the intellectual in Bombay or Sydney than with one in approaches taken in that course and White’s his own city. more empirical approach prompted me to I did recently write a paper on whether we will switch to anthropology. I was supposed to inherit my father’s have a world-state. The trend toward such a state business, a newspaper machinery export is irresistible. We’re down to some 193 states at business. I worked at it for a while after this point, down from many more so that is a very graduation, but it really was not for me. So I powerful trend. headed back to Michigan for graduate work Hoffmann: Is this happening through warfare? in anthropology. Carneiro: In some part, conquest does play a role. Hoffmann: Did White refer to Korzybski in Societies never voluntarily give up their sovereignty. his work? The Neo-Cons’ manifesto, of course, is that the U.S. Carneiro: I can’t recall him ever citing Korzybski, has the greatest military power in the world, so it but he did write some things for semantics should exercise it. Of course, they were in favor of publications and I believe he knew of it. [See the Iraq War. They seemed to fail to understand that page 65] You sort of absorb the lessons of it is one thing to invade and overwhelm a country general semantics into your bloodstream. White and quite another to pacify it and build a new state, was the quintessential scientist. A lot of favorable to the United States. anthropologists at the time were in the other Hoffmann: How long would a world-state take to camp, more humanists than scientists. But, White develop? went about his work in a very scientific manner. Carneiro: If it happens, it would take hundreds of Hoffmann: In your lecture, you did a wonderful years, maybe thousands. It’s a slow process. But job of laying out your theory of how states not compared to the 2 million years of cultural evolved. Do you see your theory still being evolution; it’s a rapid process by comparison. played out today? However, we’re still talking about a very slow Carneiro: In Iraq, you do hear references to process when you look at it in terms of one tribes, especially when the discussion is about a lifetime or even two.

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