Chapter 12: Conclusion - Part 2

I'm presenting the conclusions from my book (Chapter 12) in a series of posts. This is the second post. Click here to see the first post.  Reactions or questions are welcomed.

Not only did man spread across the globe without inherited positions of leadership, in a number of widespread places he domesticated plants and animals. Pottery, too, seems to be an independent invention in several different areas. Even before these innovations, egalitarian hunters traded over large areas. We know that shells for ornaments and stone for tools were traded because they can be found in the remains of ancient camps far from their sources. This trade was not diminished as man turned to agriculture and a more settled existence. New crafts, including pottery and cloth making, were added to the artifacts that show this widespread network of trade. We can assume that a great many other things that were traded have not stood the tests of time. An egalitarian social order apparently enabled mankind to live a peaceful and prosperous life.

Hierarchy did not nullify man’s creative abilities. New architectural skills were necessary for the great structures hierarchies required. Without doubt, egalitarian populations committed adultery, murder, and other crimes, but their burial remains seldom showed evidence for violence. War, weapons, and defensive structures have all been considered evidence for hierarchical social structure. Often there was social ranking as well as slavery. Trade became a way for the elites of the social structure to mark their wealth and authority. Burials marked the great wealth of a few; in a number of places, human servants were entombed, likely while still alive, with the dead elite.

In the early chapters of the book, two points were made: 1) Man did very well without social hierarchy; and 2) across the Old World, much of this hierarchy appeared to be linked to activities in the lower Mesopotamian Valley. Neither of these postulates fit comfortably within anthropology’s basic assumptions.

Let us examine two of the differences between the assumptions that I hold and those of anthropology. As an evangelical Christian, I have little use for evolution. However, present anthropological theories would not claim that man’s physical or mental evolution were factors in the data treated in this book. DNA from man all over the globe strongly infers that modern man spread out with his present physical and mental abilities. The distribution of family organization suggests that mankind also had a well-established family structure. Well-developed language and communication skills are in use everywhere. There is no evidence that mankind, within the time frame I have examined, was without this ability. It also appears that mankind spread out with a belief in a providential celestial creator (Chapter One).

Anthropology would prefer to believe that the notion of a single celestial creator was the result of a long evolutionary process. Earlier anthropologists who believed that their materialism was the result of more highly evolved minds have rightly been called racists. It is, or at least should be now, recognized that belief systems are chosen, not the result of mental evolution. Assumptions about physical or mental evolution within the time constraints I have used are unimportant in the conclusions I have reached.

My second assumption differs from materialistic anthropological approaches. I assume that man’s social structure cannot be accounted for without consideration of his beliefs about the cosmos. This is true not only of hierarchical social structures but also of egalitarian ones. This argument for egalitarian social structure was made in Chapter Four on the basis of our own society. The claim for egalitarianism is useless unless some meaningful indication of that equality is recognized. Anthropologists distinguish between egalitarian and hierarchical societies by pointing out that in hierarchical societies, elites are awarded their position by birth, while in egalitarian societies positions of leadership are ascribed on the basis of recognized abilities. But from within a complex society such as our own, it is obvious that privileges do come with birth. As was pointed out in Chapter Four, the argument for egalitarianism in our own society breaks down without the cosmological reconciliation of apparent and unequal opportunities. As stated in the preamble to our Declaration of Independence, this reconciliation takes place with the recognition that we are equal before our Creator.

This difference in assumptions in the second case is not at all meaningless. It is the divide between the thinking of much of anthropology and my own. Neoevolutionist archaeologists expect regularities in social structures that can be accounted for by one or a combination of material causes. Therefore, diffusion—the movement of skills or ideas—is not considered a likely cause of change in social structure. To many anthropologists, allowing other than material causes would deny their discipline the right to be considered science. To these scholars, my insights about how ancient and preliterate societies came to hold their cosmologies could not be a scientific explanation. It is not because data for these insights is lacking; rather, it is because these insights allow for the willful efforts of at least some members of the societies involved—they were not determined by material causes.

The problem is in the reconciliation between material causes and free choice. One could say I am attempting to reconstruct history; but they are attempting to establish the laws by which social structures evolve. Perhaps some day there can be some reconciliation of these two very different perspectives. For now, this lack of reconciliation is part of the same conundrum that philosophers face when claiming that man’s actions are completely determined while holding man responsible for those actions, or that the anthropologist faces when claiming to reason from the data he collects while a completely materialistic approach would deny that man is capable of such reasoning.

Go to next post.