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What came first, state societies or established religion?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by octoistire, Apr 6, 2011.

  1. vAsSiLy77

    vAsSiLy77 Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member Forum Member


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    Jun 21, 2010
     
    i still would say that the "revolutionary" aspect of the neolithic change was the progress from the more or less nomadic hunting&gathering to more local bound agriculture and stock farming (edit: at least for europe)
    we know not very much of these times, archeological evidence is rare and there are some surprising findings showing unexpected technologies and many signs of a multitude of sociological developments - i think the most prominent problem with this important era is, that it's still difficult to define a clear line/tendency of development.
    at least for central and eastern europe the change in general was necessary because the climate got warmer, the ice age ended and this drove the tundra dwelling animals north, many species like the mammoths or the giant deer died out - and the wandering tribes had to adapt to this slowly changing condition. the process wasn't all a sudden, it may have taken thousands of years and there may have been kind of early nomadic "seeding and harvesting", some remote south american tribes still practise similiar production techniques, there is also the "slash and burn" mode of production, where an area is occupied only for a few years and left if the ground becomes infertil. there is really a multitude of ways to live, early nomadic cattle keepers, fishing communities - and it's still difficult to determine the rise of "agriculture" as a dominant culture/mode of production. for europe the constant immigration of tribes from the east makes it even more difficult to see some tendency, many of the immigrants brought new technologies and modes of production, some were much more primitive again, in theory they completely absorbed the european native population and mixed with each other - maybe except for the basques - they are the only people still speaking a language that isn't related with any other language.
    for the sociological development towards hierarchy and the resulting state with social and economic classes i found these important:
    anthropologist David Graeber "fragments of an anarchist anthropology"
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragments_of_an_Anarchist_Anthropology
    there is a link for the complete Pdf at the end of the article.
    and some of Pierre Clastres writings - not very much is translated from french -
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Clastres
    especially Clastres had some really great explanations:
    "Pierre Clastres' theory thus was an explicit criticism of Marxist theories of economic determinism, in that he considered an autonomous sphere of politics, which existed in stateless societies as the active conjuration of authority. The essential question which Clastres sought to answer was: why would an individual in an egalitarian (e.g. foraging) society chose to subordinate himself to an authority? He considered the consequent rise of the state to be due to the power disparities that arise when religion credits a prophet or other medium with a direct knowledge of divine power which is unattainable by the bulk of society. It is this upsetting of the balance of power that engendered the inequality to be found in more highly structured societies, and not an initial economic disparity as argued by the Marxist school of thought."

    bit of a mystery and quite a gap in my education: what happened in the middle and far east - because the people there developed much faster and more strict towards oppression than elsewhere - but with science's eurocentric view there is not much to find about.
     
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