The book, The Separation of Heaven and Earth, examines evidence from early and preliterate human cultures around the globe from a fresh vantage point, fusing evidence from two disciplines: cultural anthropology along with archaeology and the history of religions. A fundamental premise of this vantage point is one popularly recognized in our own day: ideas have consequences.
The contention is that the distribution of a wide-spread cosmology, here called the "the separation of heaven and earth," documents a fundamental change within human culture: a philosophical justification for the introduction of social hierarchy. Prior to this change, egalitarian societies holding a belief in a providential Supreme Being were prevalent.
The book documents the fundamental changes in a society resulting from the introduction of this cosmology. The cosmology offered that the environment could be controlled by ritual performed by the proper elites. The office occupied by these elites typically came to have wealth, power, and control over the population. The premise of the book differs from anthropology in that many anthropologists assume that wealth, power, and control precede the introduction such a cosmology. Their premise is that cosmologies justify the inequalities already present in the social structure. Anthropologists generally turn a blind eye to the distribution of cosmologies.
Hunter-gatherers spread around the globe in a social order often referred to as egalitarianism. In a number of areas around the globe these hunters identified plants for food that they could not only harvest but also plant and tend. In some of these places pottery was also independently invented. It is pottery, new stone, that lends its name, Neolithic, to the new economic circumstances of these early farmers. This change in economic circumstance happened without evidence for hierarchy; therefore, not only hunters but also early farmers were egalitarian. Egalitarian societies have domesticated plants and animals, invented many crafts, and traded freely with others that specialized in production of different food, raw materials, or finished craft products.
Archaeologists have identified prehistoric social hierarchy by evidence for war, weapons, unequal grave goods, trade meant to enrich the elite, evidence for forced labor, and instability. Why would people give up their egalitarian status to become servants of the social structure? The book examines this question. The evidence available to answer this question is not just from ancient civilizations. Recently there were egalitarian societies whose neighbors had accepted the notion of elites with ritual control of nature. And, interestingly, this ritual control was introduced by the familiar cosmology, the separation of heaven and earth.
This blog is intended to provide a forum to discuss the validity of this interpretation as well as implications it holds for our own day.
