Was There Life Before Chiefs

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Was There Life Before Chiefs?

• By Jerri Dennis

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Thomas Hobbes Opinion

• Humans have an unquenchable desire for power
  that, in absence of a strong ruler, inevitably
  leads to a war of all against all.

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Was Hobbes Correct?

• According to evidence of surviving bands and
  villages, NO
• For the greater part of prehistory our kind got
  along quite well without so much as a paramount
  chief.

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Life Without Rulers

• For 30,000 years after takeoff, life went on
  without kings, queens, prime ministers,
  presidents, parliaments, etc
• How did our ancestors manage to live life without
  rulers?

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Small Populations

• With 50 people per band or 150 per village,
  everybody knew everyone else intimately, so the
  bonding of reciprocal exchange held people
  together.

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Generalized Reciprocity

• People gave with the expectation of taking and
  took with the expectation of giving.
• People did not specify how much or exactly what
  they expected to get back or when they expected
  to get it.

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Primitive Communism

• Generalized Reciprocity is very similar to Karl
  Marxs concept of Primitive Communism
• Primitive Communism exists when all resources and
  technologies are shared and private ownership is
  not found.

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Reciprocity-A Small Societys Bank

• Chance played a big role in the capture of
  animals, collection of wild foods, and the
  success of rudimentary forms of agriculture.

• So, the best way for our ancestors to provide for
  their inevitable rainy day was to be generous.

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How does reciprocity exist?

• Where reciprocity really prevails in daily life,
  etiquette requires that generosity be taken for
  granted.

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Fieldwork by Robert Dentan

• Dentan discovered, while working among the Semai
  of central Malaysia, that no one ever says thank
  you for the meat received from another hunter.
• Expressing gratitude suggests first that one has
  calculated the amount of the gift and second,
  that one did not expect the donor to be so
  generous.
• Saying thank you is considered very rude!

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Harris Opinion

• Harris states that in small societies it is in
  everybodys best interest to allow all men
  freedom of access to the natural habitat.
• Enforcing ownership and leadership reduces the
  societies overall chance of survival.

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Absence of Leadership

• Our ancient ancestors needed close forms of
  cooperation in order to survive.
• The absence of leadership allowed these close
  knit groups to survive without the lust for power
  becoming a damaging factor.

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Harris Theory of Cultural Materialism

• Harris analysis of this chapter is consistent
  with the structure component of CM, which
  consists of the organized patterns of social life
  carried out among the members of a society.
• One of the necessary survival functions that each
  society must fulfill is to maintain orderly and
  secure relationships.
• Generalized reciprocity aided our ancestors in
  maintaining secure relationships through
  egalitarian societies.
• Leadership would have worked against their system
  of survival.

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Possible Essay Question!
How were societies able to survive life before
chiefs? Explain.