Chapter 12: Conclusion - Part 6

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

I have suggested a few of the questions about the grand scheme of evolution to point out that there are plenty of reasons to doubt the truth claims from the scientists that offer evolution as fact. Evolution has become an undisputed fact, not from the evidence but by the declaration of the elites of the scientific community. Those who do question this assertion are not less knowledgeable concerning the evidence; they are simply not invited into the community. This exclusion of rivals is the way elites over the ages have always behaved.

True, science has given us a technological environment that is beyond what most of us older adults even imagined during the earlier years of our life. But the theory of evolution has had nothing to do with the development of these technologies. The truth is that science would do nicely without the burden of rationalizing the cosmology of the elites. The name given for this exclusive approach to science is “consensus science.” It is a contradiction in terms. Yet we have a great illustration of consensus science offered presently by the advocates of human caused global warming.

Our egalitarian heritage is under siege. We are increasingly marginalized as religious if we hold that the celestial Creator created us equal and endowed us with certain unalienable rights. Our nation has several cultures within it, yet only one now has control of public academic institutions to train our leaders, teachers, and journalists. Only one, through past propaganda, has been able to persuade even our court systems that materialism is science and any other metaphysical position is religion.

Some have offered that religion and science each function in its own magisterium. From the magisterium of science, we discover the factual character of nature; from the magisterium of religion, we find meaning in our lives and a moral basis for our actions. I have two problems with this. First, I live in one universe, and the Creator gave me a stewardship that included knowing and understanding his world. And, it is the magisterium of science that has offered this division. When there are differences of opinion, science’s magisterium is said to define reality and must overrule any dissent from the religious magisterium.

I do not know if we have the political will to keep our equality before God and the liberty that we still claim is ours as citizens. Many seem willing to trade their liberty for care from the state. This has always been the promise of idolatry, and it has always been a threat. I hope that this book has opened your thinking to a new understanding about prehistory. We have been taught that our present perspectives have evolved from the base thinking of a primitive mankind. However, mankind with an egalitarian social order successfully spread over the world. It is likely that he did this with the same equality before the Creator and rights from him that we have recently enjoyed in our nation.

If this is true, it seems that we have another chance to enjoy this knowledge, freedom, and provision. It is difficult to imagine that a move from these beliefs and ideals would bring us any good that could possibly repay our loss if we again separate ourselves from God.

Chapter 12: Conclusion - Part 5

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

Shortly after the British colonies in North America had their revolution, the French had a revolution based not on the principles laid out in the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence but rather on the principles of the Enlightenment. After killing the elites of the French monarchy, the revolutionaries killed their own leaders for they, in turn, had become elites. France was disabled for some time after their revolution. But the Enlightenment gained adherents in spite of the experience of the French, especially in Europe. Philosophers proceeded with great enthusiasm to offer an agenda that would bring all nature, including human nature, under control. This agenda promised that by what could be known through reason and the senses, mankind could build a utopian world. Below is a listing of the ideals of the radical enlightenment in the nineteenth century (Rex Ambler 1966:143).

(1) The self is identical with consciousness and is directly knowable through individual introspection.

(2) The world, as essentially matter, can be identified with everything that is given through the senses, so that it can be thoroughly known, in principle at least, by the combined use of sensuous experience and rational mediation. The mind is a mirror of nature.

(3) The ultimate truth of the world, and of ourselves, can be known by us: the ultimate truth is the sum total of all the true things we can say about the world on the basis of sense and reason.

(4) In the world, things change according to single, one-way causation, on the model of a machine.

(5) Given (1) and (4), it follows that in principle we know how to control the world, and if necessary how to change it completely. All we need is the technical power to move the material levers of causation.

(6) Finally, given an introspective knowledge of what we free individuals want, it is possible to transform the world so that it answers completely to our desires (alternatively, our sense of rightness).

Both man’s physical and social problems would be solved by this liberated reason. After Darwin, the Enlightenment gained a cosmology that purported to explain the obvious design in living things, eliminating the need for an intelligent creator. Humans were also considered the product of this mechanism. Enlightenment, with this new cosmological basis, had its influence on both Marxist and fascist thought. The events of the early twentieth century dampened some of the optimism for what the Enlightenment agenda could accomplish.

The effects of this thought system did not make inroads as quickly in the United States, where conservative Christianity was still influential. Enlightened reason first gained ground in our academic institutions. Increasingly, mainline Christianity bought into this evolution cosmology, although its adherents offered a compromise with it by holding that God created and revealed himself through evolutionary processes. The utopian view expressed in the agenda of the enlightened, now held by liberals or progressives, has continued to motivate political action in our own nation. As evidence of these inroads, consider the teaching of origins in our public schools. At the start of the twentieth century, only creation was taught. Near the middle of the century, neither cosmology was taught as a compromise with those who believed in evolution. Now creation is no longer allowed and evolution is increasingly found in the curriculum. Even the religious nature concerns of our founders are overlooked. Of course, it is not immediately obvious to us that the grand scheme of evolution is cosmology in the same sense that the word has been used throughout this book. It is taught as knowledge gained by science. But then, by definition, a society’s cosmology is believed.

Science was not always as useful as it has become to political and academic elites. As explained above, men with an egalitarian perspective pioneered this method of gaining knowledge. When they made discoveries, they were careful to submit them to others along with the procedures they used to get their results. The information thus acquired could be verified, and new circumstances under which the discoveries might be applied broadened the base of knowledge. In this way a hypothesis would be found useful or discarded. Science itself was an egalitarian process. But there was always an amount of uncertainty about the understanding that was based on new discoveries.

Today’s scientists still insist on this uncertainty in the method of science. But when the Louisiana state law requiring balanced treatment of evolution and creation was challenged in 1987 in the Supreme Court, Edwards v. Aguillard, the attorneys arguing against the law were successful in marginalizing creation by labeling it religious rather than scientific. In other words, what had been competing viewpoints—God is responsible for our existence vs. purposeless material causes brought us into existence—compete no longer. The one is scientific by definition; the other has been marginalized as religious. Science is no longer a quest for truth. It is the quest for the best answer assuming material causes. The evolutionary cosmology has become the unassailable cosmology of the elites of the society.

Actually, many in our society have not kept up with this aspect of science since evolution became an all-embracing cosmology. When Darwin advanced his hypothesis, it was generally believed by the enlightened that the material world was itself eternal. It is no longer believed that the material world—or material itself—is eternal. It is now believed that material had its origin in the Big Bang—or perhaps more accurately, events started with the Big Bang brought material into being. If this is not considered a blow to the philosophy of materialism, it should be. Further, astrophysicists have found that the universe as we know it depends on the precise relationship of several constants. These constants appear to be fine tuned in order for the universe to accommodate the complexity needed for our existence. The name that the physicists have given this fortuitous situation is anthropic—that is to say that these constants must be precisely as they are for man to exist. In the creation cosmology, both these discoveries would be comfortably accommodated without new vocabulary. In fact, they would be taken as firm evidence for a creation cosmology.

Shortly after Darwin published his book, Pasteur demonstrated that life comes from life. Among other things, this principle has led to canning industries since one can be confident that if no bacteria survives the canning process and the container prevents any more from entering, the canned goods will not spoil. This is well established. Yet if evolution is to be preferred over a creation model, it must account for the origin of even the simplest form of life. Considerable research has been done with the purpose of offering a pathway for the highly unlikely event that lifeless material would organize itself into something alive and capable of reproducing itself. After the efforts of 150 years, the results have not been promising. May we suggest a creator?

Darwin admitted that the fossil record as then known did not support his hypothesis. But he believed that with future finds from paleontology, the fossils he predicted would be found. But now it is admitted that the fossil record has not supported Darwin’s hypothesis any better than it did in his day. Other scientists are working with DNA, the code that transmits the genetic material within the cell. It has been increasingly difficult to understand the DNA code in any way but the information needed for the cells to form and organize. Information requires intelligence; it does not happen by chance. Darwin offered that present forms of life could be traced back to a common ancestor, but that statement has not been better supported than his illustration with pigeons in his Origin of the Species, published in 1859. It is obvious that breeders of domesticated plants and animals are able to produce new varieties. What is not obvious is that these varieties would over time become new species. Neither the fossil record nor DNA studies have yielded conclusive evidence to support the proposition that all life can be traced back to a common ancestor. Yet this proposition continues to be taught (and believed) as truth.

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Chapter 12: Conclusion - Part 4

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

With the sixteenth century Reformation, there was a new interest in separating the church from its traditional entanglements with the Mother Church, the Roman Empire, and the Greek philosophers. Again there was persecution and even wars. Early in the seventeenth century, the first English colonists settled in North America looking to escape religious strife while practicing their faith. But back in Europe, others with this new freedom to reexamine the traditions about their faith and the natural world turned their interests to what has become modern science. It is simply not true that these men found their efforts frustrated by their religious faith. In fact, they undertook to think the thoughts of the Creator himself. They rejected Aristotelian teleology and made noteworthy discoveries, some of which have stood the test of time, others of which have become the basis for further investigations. Their argument that God created a functioning universe and equipped us to understand its working well enough to be stewards of it became the philosophic basis for modern science. While it is not considered in these terms, this is still the only metaphysical basis for modern science.

Early in the eighteenth century, philosophers were successful in claiming that since the created universe was completed and functioned as a machine, God was unnecessary in the present. First came Deism, and later, after Darwin, it became possible to be a fulfilled atheist. It might seem that the notion of providence had become unimportant. But alas, especially in the United States, evangelical Christians who acknowledge the providence of God are still considered a threat. Although it is easily discovered that our prestigious early colleges and universities were started as Christian institutions, the present day leaders of these institutions now run from their own history. Although many documents and stonework on buildings in our nation’s capital still reflect their origin, publicly acknowledging a providential creator now brings threat of a lawsuit. Again, why should this be? It is true that evangelical Christians, as their name suggests, want to convince others of the truth of their cosmology. But it is inconsistent for a person who believes all are equal before God to attempt to coerce another to hold this belief. Hence, it can be argued that people with egalitarian beliefs are not welcome whether they evangelize or not. Why would this be? I offer again that they are a threat in that they insist the Creator, not the social structure, provides for them.

When an egalitarian social structure in the past was set aside, as far as can be ascertained, the cosmology of the separation of heaven and earth accomplished it. This cosmology served to introduce new thoughts about the cosmos. In this new cosmos certain members of the social structure were thought able to influence the environment to benefit society. These few, of course, became the elites of hierarchical social structures. By performing these rituals, they provided for the whole of the social structure and were thus thought worthy of the honor and fear given them. The people of the society became the elites’ dependents; these dependents could then be identified as the masses. This is, of course, the positive side of the contributions of that cosmology. Generally, our concern has been with the negation of the conditions that were in place before this cosmology was introduced.

Presently the academic community is also offering a different cosmos from the one brought to this country from Northern Europe in the early seventeenth century. This cosmos is often a totally material one that is controlled by laws that the elites of the academic and scientific community claim to control for the benefit of the masses. Within this cosmos, there is no longer a need for a creator. The grand evolutionary cosmology explains all after the Big Bang Theory (hypothesis for universe’s origin) as the result of time, chance, and necessity. How has this new cosmos been introduced?

The Enlightenment period of Western philosophy has already been mentioned several times. The term enlightenment implies that the time before it was a time of darkness, obviously symbolizing ignorance, even as the darkness did before the separation of heaven and earth in that cosmology. The move from not being able to prove God’s existence by “rational” argument to saying there is no knowable God was not as difficult as it might seem. Philosophers have merely insisted that all that can be known can be known through reason or by empirical means. Reason is, of course, not used in the same sense as in the Old Testament of as the Apostle Paul used it in Romans 1:20.

Since God could not be known through philosophers’ arguments or scientists’ experiments, God could not be known at all. Since God could not be known, the Bible contained no useful information about God. At the start of the Enlightenment, Christians and rationalists shared a zeal for truth. But as time went on, the chief concern of the enlightened became the defense of their enlightened perspective. Rationalists who had earlier believed in God had already rejected God’s grace and questioned the reality of eternal life. Since Darwin, the enlightened have rejected God as well. In effect, once again, we have the separation of heaven and earth. This new cosmos is not animated by spirit beings in charge of aspects of the environment; now it has become an entirely material cosmos that works as a machine. In the ancient system, elites sought benefits from the animated universe by ritual. Now enlightened elites seek to gain benefits by moving the levers of causation. In each case, the benefits are overshadowed by the loss of freedom for its citizens.

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Chapter 12: Conclusion - Part 3

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

The argument can certainly be advanced, on the basis of the information presented in Chapter Two, that for a good period of time before the first hierarchy appeared in the Mesopotamian Valley, a complex civilization existed. This complexity could not be avoided as soon as there was craft specialization. These specialized occupations would include the potter, the weaver, the farmer, the herder, the tanner, the fisherman, the stoneworker, and others that have not been named. The products of these specialized occupations were traded along with those materials made of stone, timber, shells, and metal unavailable in many areas. My point is that in order to remain egalitarian in attitude, the people in this society needed to reconcile their obvious differences in skills, opportunities, even wealth (although here none appeared to be ostentatious), and pride of location. Likely, this reconciliation took place in a shared cosmology in which they all recognized not only their equality but also the providence promised through this cosmology.

The obvious lack of great disparities in wealth in the Mesopotamian Valley for the long period before the emergence of hierarchy requires explanation. Two points are to be made: 1) They apparently did not need elites, and 2) they did not look to elites to control the environment for their benefit. This second point is not unimportant. The few egalitarian groups for which we have information thanked the Creator for their provisions. If they were truly part of a much more inclusive population (argument from Chapter One), it is likely that most people recognized the Creator as provider before the introduction of social hierarchy. Then it is a reasonable inference that the egalitarian population of the lower Mesopotamian Valley, among whom the first clear evidence for hierarchy has been recognized, had previously considered the Creator as their provider, rather than elites in a hierarchy.

The argument is strengthened when comparing Nilotic tribes in Chapter Nine and southeast and central tribes in Australia in Chapter Ten. From these comparisons, we can see that the Creator was made distant in each case while introducing elites with ritual control of the environment. And in each case the charter for the elites in these hierarchies was a cosmology that is easily recognizable as a separation of heaven and earth cosmology. This appears to be the same cosmology that chartered the hierarchy of the ancient world. In each of these more recent cases, the social structure through its elites replaced the Creator as the provider.

Materialistic anthropology has recognized that elites in a hierarchy are believed to provide for the population in preliterate societies. But they underscore the falsity of this belief, claiming that a cosmology embodying such a belief is merely rationalization for the recognition of special treatment for elites. Of course, materialistic anthropology would also say that the providence of the Creator is merely a false belief based on a faulty cosmology. The problem with this reasoning is that it denies the reality of culture, for surely human ideals and beliefs are an essential part of culture. Anthropology offers that cosmology rationalizes special treatment for elites. However, it has yet to recognize that not only inequalities within a complex hierarchical society but also inequalities within the simplest of egalitarian societies also need to be reconciled within a cosmology.

But if egalitarianism is basically a culture pattern—a belief system shared by a society or community—can some individuals hold it within a greater community that does not? The answer is a qualified yes, qualified because an individual cannot exist as a community. But an individual can indeed believe that all individuals are equal before God and provided for by him. How do such persons fare in nonegalitarian settings? By and large, it is fair to say that most evangelical Christians are committed to an egalitarian perspective as defined in the preceding sentence. Today, many of these Christians are in nations where they are persecuted. Why are they persecuted? Their belief system requires that they should be honest, hardworking, and kind. It would seem that they should be good citizens anywhere. Yet they are apparently a threat to both religious and political systems. What is the nature of that threat? I suggest that it is because their Creator, rather than the social structure, provides for them.

One egalitarian culture within a larger society whose history is recorded is early Christianity. Here again, Christians were persecuted as a threat in spite of their attempt to be good citizens. They were charged as “haters of mankind.” The reason for this charge was that they did not participate in the sacrifices to the gods. Without these sacrifices, it was feared that the provision of the gods would be curtailed. This underscores the importance of the interaction between the hierarchy and the destiny of the society. When Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, the empire did not take on an egalitarian social structure. The emperor himself called councils and became effectively the head of the church. Certainly, many individuals remained egalitarian in perspective, but Christendom itself became a branch, or at least an arbiter, of political power. Over much of its history, Christianity has not been egalitarian.

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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.

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Chapter 12: Conclusion - Part 1

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

The introduction of the book pointed out that my approach to prehistory is different from that of most other books on this subject. My approach has used primarily the scholarship from two disciplines: history of religions and anthropology. Anthropology recognizes a relationship between the cosmology or origin story of a group and its social structure. For anthropologists, this story justifies existing social privileges. While anthropologists accept the importance of cosmology within the social structure, they do not find it important that the thematic material for many of these cosmologies can be found all around the globe. If they choose to recognize these similarities at all, they have explained them as archetypes, a demonstration of mental development, or psychological tendency. In short, rather than considering the possibility that ideas were important in the past even as they are today, most anthropologists insist on materialistic rather than idealistic approaches in their craft (Chapter Four).

However, some scholars in history of religions trace these similar cosmologies to discover the history of their development. Yet, while history of religions traces the history of mankind’s ideas about the cosmos, that discipline avoids questions about the importance of these cosmologies in the social structure of a society. Historian of religions Mircea Eliade found that following the prevalence of a cosmos in which a single celestial creator was central, a cosmology with various titles, called in this book the separation of heaven and earth, became dominant. My approach offers an obvious connection. Mankind spread across the globe with an egalitarian social structure and later adopted hierarchical ones. The connection is that the change from a single celestial creator cosmology to the separation of heaven and earth cosmology was related to the change from egalitarian to hierarchical social structure.

We cannot know directly the beliefs of man as he spread across the globe. The first written material we have follows clear archaeological evidence for social hierarchy by most of a thousand years. The Egyptian cosmology as recorded in the pyramid texts is the earliest written cosmology known (Chapter Three). Later the Sumerians left us with literature containing cosmological material that we could interpret. Considerably later, using the Rig Veda for information, we can claim some insight into the first cosmology of the Indo-Europeans. All of these, along with early Hittite and Greek cosmologies, offer representatives of the myth of the separation of heaven and earth. When an attempt is made to reconstruct Chinese early cosmological thoughts, they too suggested the presence of this cosmology. From this material we can infer that a separation of heaven and earth cosmology was used as the charter to introduce the first social hierarchy.

This is an important inference. True, it is only an inference. However, it is the most probable from the material available. It complements Eliade’s observations (Chapter Five) about the cosmologies held by significant numbers of societies, and it recognizes an anthropological interpretation of cosmology itself. What neither anthropology nor the history of religions even try to answer is, why this cosmology? Malinowski (Chapter One) moved anthropology in the direction of finding cosmology to be an important tool in understanding social structure, but he left cosmology itself in the superstructure. That is, Malinowski interpreted cosmology as justification for social privileges, implicitly denying that cosmology, serving as ideology, could have been motivation for these privileges. From a materialist’s point of view, the elites performed a useful function in social organization. To the materialist, therefore, the functional benefit of fixed leadership accounts for the presence of hierarchy. From this perspective, the claim that elites controlled the environment for the benefit of the society was declared mere rationalization for the special privileges of the elites.

However, from an idealist’s perspective, this data underscores a possible antithetical relationship between the cosmology on which hierarchical social structure was first built and the cosmology of egalitarian societies. Egalitarian societies believe that the Creator provides for them. The elites in the social structure in hierarchical societies ritually manipulated the environment to provide for their people. Therefore, it was necessary to discredit the providence of the Creator, often symbolized by heaven, in order to invest elites with the ability to provide for the society. As long as a celestial creator made man equal and providentially cared for him, there was no opportunity for social hierarchy to come into being.

Highly structured civilizations left us magnificent ruins both demonstrating technological skills and representing the organization of a great many man-hours of labor. With this in mind, many anthropologists look to a hierarchical social order to solve most of man’s organizational problems. In the Mesopotamian Valley, city-states emerged without the lengthy precursor steps that their model for the evolution of the state predicts. In seeking to remedy this apparent anomaly, some anthropologists find that chiefdom hierarchy existed there without the evidence normally required for identifying this social order. Neoevolutionary anthropologists sometimes seek to demonstrate hierarchy (especially chiefdom society) where the normal criteria that indicate this social order do not exist.

In spite of this, most anthropologists recognize that mankind spread across the globe without evidence for hierarchical social order. They not only fed and clothed themselves within an egalitarian social order, they also invented crafts to enrich their lives. Among the known recent hunter-gatherers, family was important. Most of these hunters were monogamous. And surprisingly, the belief in a celestial creator was widespread enough to make it reasonable to assume that mankind spread across the globe with such a belief. The alternative that they communicated this belief to each other after they spread out seems preposterous, and to suggest that these people independently came to this belief system would also require considerable explanation.

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Correction on Page 183

This is one of several corrections to the book. For other corrections see Corrections.
The sentence starting on the third line of page 183 reads:

However, it has yet to recognize that not only inequalities within a complex egalitarian society but also inequalities within the simplest of egalitarian societies need to be reconciled within a cosmology.

It should read:

However, it has yet to recognize that not only inequalities within a complex hierarchical society are justified by cosmology but also inequalities within the simplest of egalitarian societies need to be reconciled within a cosmology.