The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire by Kent Flannery, Joyce Marcus Read Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kent Flannery, Joyce Marcus
its own tradition of point-making.
Nor did the differences end there. While each of the encamped groups made most of its stone artifacts from flint, each had brought to Lindenmeier a small quantity of obsidian, a naturally occurring volcanic glass. Obsidian, while less readily available than flint, would have been preferred when hunters wanted extremely sharp cutting edges.
One can track obsidian to its source by analyzing its chemical trace elements; this was done to the Lindenmeier obsidian, with surprising results. The obsidian in Area I was mostly from a volcanic flow near Jemez, New Mexico, 330 miles to the south of Lindenmeier. The obsidian in Area II was mostly from a flow at Yellowstone Park, 360 miles to the northwest. Not only did the groups camped at Lindenmeier have different point-making styles, they evidently belonged to different networks of trading partners that gave them access to distant resources.
Archaeologists have found no evidence that Folsom society possessed clans. In the case of the Lindenmeier site, Wilmsen reconstructs the individual camps of Area I as consisting of 14 to 18 people; those of Area II he estimates at 13 to 17 people. Clearly these extended families had created networks of trading partners and allowed other families to share their best hunting locales. We do not know if their meat-sharing resembled that of the Netsilik. We have seen enough, however, to conclude that widespread networks of nonrelatives are not a recent development but a long-standing behavior of small-scale foraging societies.
WARM-WEATHER FORAGERS
Not all foragers, to be sure, had to cope with ice. Even during the bitterest cold of 30,000 to 18,000 years ago, equatorial Asia and Africa would have been temperate or even frost-free. At warm latitudes there were thousands of edible plants, and the economic role of women was different from that in the Arctic: often it was the women who harvested the bulk of society’s food.
Until about 1,700 years ago, much of Africa south of the Sahara Desert was occupied by foragers. Anthropologists believe that many of them spoke languages whose consonants included clicking sounds that we are forced to write with punctuation marks. Today the speakers of these “click languages” are largely confined to regions no one else wants. They were unable to defend their territory against larger-scale societies, beginning with the Iron Age farmers, herders, and metalsmiths of the so-called Bantu migration. In the rest of this chapter we look at two foraging groups whose lands have been reduced by tidal waves of more complex societies.
THE BASARWA AND THE MAGIC OF THE NAME
Once there may have been 200,000 speakers of click languages in southern Africa. By the 1970s they were reduced to 40,000, many occupying the Kalahari Desert on the border between Namibia and Botswana. Anthropologists love them but cannot decide on a politically correct name for them. Everyone agrees that they should not be called “Bushmen,” as they were for centuries. So scholars began referring to them by their local group names, such as !Kung San, Dobe !Kung, and so forth. Eventually someone decided that they could all be referred to by the supposedly neutral term “Basarwa.” By the time you finish reading this page, of course, Basarwa will probably have become politically incorrect.
By any name, the Basarwa are among the most thoroughly studied foragers on earth. Anthropologists such as Lorna Marshall, George Silberbauer, and Richard Lee were among the pioneers of the 1950s and 1960s. Unfortunately, by the 1980s, many Basarwa had been converted to an underclass in Botswana society. In our description of Basarwa society, therefore, we lean most heavily on the earliest studies.
The Kalahari provided the Basarwa with endless vistas of brush and savanna, sandy plains, dunes, and low hills. The bedrock was pitted with sinkholes that became watering places, crucial landmarks in a world with only ten inches of
Nor did the differences end there. While each of the encamped groups made most of its stone artifacts from flint, each had brought to Lindenmeier a small quantity of obsidian, a naturally occurring volcanic glass. Obsidian, while less readily available than flint, would have been preferred when hunters wanted extremely sharp cutting edges.
One can track obsidian to its source by analyzing its chemical trace elements; this was done to the Lindenmeier obsidian, with surprising results. The obsidian in Area I was mostly from a volcanic flow near Jemez, New Mexico, 330 miles to the south of Lindenmeier. The obsidian in Area II was mostly from a flow at Yellowstone Park, 360 miles to the northwest. Not only did the groups camped at Lindenmeier have different point-making styles, they evidently belonged to different networks of trading partners that gave them access to distant resources.
Archaeologists have found no evidence that Folsom society possessed clans. In the case of the Lindenmeier site, Wilmsen reconstructs the individual camps of Area I as consisting of 14 to 18 people; those of Area II he estimates at 13 to 17 people. Clearly these extended families had created networks of trading partners and allowed other families to share their best hunting locales. We do not know if their meat-sharing resembled that of the Netsilik. We have seen enough, however, to conclude that widespread networks of nonrelatives are not a recent development but a long-standing behavior of small-scale foraging societies.
WARM-WEATHER FORAGERS
Not all foragers, to be sure, had to cope with ice. Even during the bitterest cold of 30,000 to 18,000 years ago, equatorial Asia and Africa would have been temperate or even frost-free. At warm latitudes there were thousands of edible plants, and the economic role of women was different from that in the Arctic: often it was the women who harvested the bulk of society’s food.
Until about 1,700 years ago, much of Africa south of the Sahara Desert was occupied by foragers. Anthropologists believe that many of them spoke languages whose consonants included clicking sounds that we are forced to write with punctuation marks. Today the speakers of these “click languages” are largely confined to regions no one else wants. They were unable to defend their territory against larger-scale societies, beginning with the Iron Age farmers, herders, and metalsmiths of the so-called Bantu migration. In the rest of this chapter we look at two foraging groups whose lands have been reduced by tidal waves of more complex societies.
THE BASARWA AND THE MAGIC OF THE NAME
Once there may have been 200,000 speakers of click languages in southern Africa. By the 1970s they were reduced to 40,000, many occupying the Kalahari Desert on the border between Namibia and Botswana. Anthropologists love them but cannot decide on a politically correct name for them. Everyone agrees that they should not be called “Bushmen,” as they were for centuries. So scholars began referring to them by their local group names, such as !Kung San, Dobe !Kung, and so forth. Eventually someone decided that they could all be referred to by the supposedly neutral term “Basarwa.” By the time you finish reading this page, of course, Basarwa will probably have become politically incorrect.
By any name, the Basarwa are among the most thoroughly studied foragers on earth. Anthropologists such as Lorna Marshall, George Silberbauer, and Richard Lee were among the pioneers of the 1950s and 1960s. Unfortunately, by the 1980s, many Basarwa had been converted to an underclass in Botswana society. In our description of Basarwa society, therefore, we lean most heavily on the earliest studies.
The Kalahari provided the Basarwa with endless vistas of brush and savanna, sandy plains, dunes, and low hills. The bedrock was pitted with sinkholes that became watering places, crucial landmarks in a world with only ten inches of
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