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Understanding Key Transitions in World
Prehistory
This chapter will enable you to
answer these questions:
1.
What is unilineal evolution and why did
anthropology discard it?
2.
What theories have been proposed to explain the
origin of agriculture?
3.
What theories have been proposed to explain the
origin of the archaic state?
4.
What is the difference between sufficient and
necessary conditions in an explanation?
Outline
Introduction
 Evolutionary Studies
 Why Were Plants Domesticated?
 Why Did the Archaic State Arise?

Introduction

Historical sciences approach subjects differently
than laboratory sciences;

laboratory sciences can repeat experiments,
changing one variable while holding others
constant to determine what effect a particular
variable has on the outcome;

historical science can not.
Introduction

Archaeology cannot ignore the “when,” “how,”
and “what” questions of prehistory; we need to
know the particular processes and events at
work.

Necessary conditions of change must exist for a
particular change to occur;

Sufficient conditions are the minimal ones
needed for a change to occur.
Evolutionary Studies

Unilineal cultural evolution, the belief that
human societies have evolved culturally along a
single developmental trajectory.

Typically, such schemes depict Western
civilization as the most advanced evolutionary
stage. Anthropology rejects this idea.
Evolutionary Studies

Comparative method, in Enlightenment
philosophy, the idea that the world’s existing
peoples reflect different stages of human
cultural evolution.
Evolutionary Studies: Darwin and
the Origin of Species

Charles Darwin (1809-1882),On the Origin of
Species, 1859

Natural selection, the process through which
some individuals survive and reproduce at higher
rates than others because of their genetic
heritage;

leads to the perpetuation of certain genetic
qualities at the expense of others.
Evolutionary Studies: John Lubbock



John Lubbock (1834-1913), Pre-historic Times, as
Illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners
and Customs of Modern Savages, 1865.
Illustrated the lives of “paleolithic” and “neolithic”
people by reference to contemporary “primitives”–
native peoples of Africa, Asia, and Australia.
The assumption was that contemporary
“primitives” were living approximations of what
Europeans used to be.
Evolutionary Studies: Social
Darwinism

Social Darwinism, the extension of the principles
of Darwinian evolution to social phenomena;

It implies that conflict between societies and
between classes of the same society benefits
humanity by removing “unfit” individuals and
social forms.
Evolutionary Studies: Social
Darwinism

Social Darwinism assumed that unfettered
economic competition and warfare were primary
ways to determine which societies were “fittest.”

The view that cultural differences were grounded
in biological differences.
Evolutionary Studies: Franz Boas
(1858-1942)


Ethnocentricism – the attitude or belief that
one’s own cultural ways are superior to any
other.
Historical particularism – the view that each
culture is the product of a unique sequence of
developments in which chance plays a major role
in bringing about change.
Differences Between Unilineal and
Modern Evolutionism
Modern evolutionism contains none of the racist or
moral overtones of 19th century unilineal
evolutionism.
Contemporary evolutionary thinking recognizes that
if natural selection works on cultural phenomena, it
is far more subtle than it is among animals.
Although unilineal evolutionists argued over the
details of evolution, they all believed in a single
immutable sequence.
Generalized Historical Sequence
Subsistence
Band
Foraging
Tribe
Foraging, horticulture pastoralism
(herding)
Chiefdom
Agriculture; pastoralists often
incorporated within society.
Agriculture, industrial, pastoral
separated as specialists.
State
Generalized Historical Sequence
Economic Organization
Band
Equal access to strategic resources through
sharing and reciprocity.
Tribe
Reciprocity; limited redistribution of goods
by charismatic leaders
Chiefdom Chief redistributes goods of lower-ranking
people; includes some non-food producers.
State
Elites control access to strategic resources;
includes non-food producers.
Generalized Historical Sequence
Political Organization
Band
Egalitarian
Tribe
Egalitarian; temporary and limited roles of
authority; competitive feasting to establish
rank.
Chiefdom Differences in status based on genealogical
closeness to chief, who has a permanent,
inherited office.
State
State controlled by elites and run by
specialists
Generalized Historical Sequence
Settlement pattern
Band
Tribe
Temporary camps; some seasonal
settlements reoccupied.
Sedentary villages (temporary) camps
among pastoralists)
Chiefdom Sedentary villages of different sizes; ranked
(chief’s village has highest rank).
State
Hierarchy of settlements reflects
administrative functions; may be cities.
Generalized Historical Sequence
Population density
Band
Low
Tribe
Low to medium
Chiefdom
Medium to high
State
High
Generalized Historical Sequence

Tribal societies, a wide range of social
formations that lie between egalitarian foragers
and ranked societies (such as chiefdoms).

Tribal societies are normally horticultural and
sedentary, with a higher level of competition
than seen among nomadic hunter-gatherers.
Generalized Historical Sequence

Archaic states, a centralized political system
found in complex societies, characterized by
having a virtual monopoly on the power to
coerce.

Civilization, a complex urban society with a
high level of cultural achievement in the arts and
sciences, craft specialization, a surplus of food
and/or labor, and a hierarchically stratified social
organization.
Generalized Historical Sequence

Horticulture, cultivation, using hand tools only, in
which plots of land are used for a few years and
then allowed to lie fallow.

Intensive agriculture, cultivation using draft
animals, machinery, or hand tools in which plots
are used annually; often entails irrigation, land
reclamation, and fertilizers.
Major Hearths of Agriculture
Why Were Plants Domesticated?

Oasis Theory, proposed by V. Gordon Childe,
argues that animal domestication arose as
people, plants, and animals congregated around
water sources during the arid years that
followed the Pleistocene.

In this scenario, agriculture arose because of
“some genius” and preceded animal
domestication.
Why Were Plants Domesticated?


Hilly Flanks Theory, proposed by Robert
Braidwood, it claims that agriculture arose in the
areas where wild ancestors of domesticated
wheat and barley grow.
Attributing agriculture’s appearance to human
efforts to continue to increase the productivity
and stability of their food base, coupled with
culture being “ready” to accept an agricultural
lifeway.
Why Were Plants Domesticated?

Density-Equilibrium Model, proposed by Lewis
Binford, attributes the origins of agriculture to
population pressure in favorable environments that
resulted in emigration to marginal lands, where
agriculture was needed to increase productivity.
 Population
pressure, the result of a
population’s reaching carrying capacity.
Why Were Plants Domesticated?
 Carrying
capacity, the number of people that a
unit of land can support under a particular
technology.
 Teosinte,
a plant native to southern Mexico,
believed to be the wild ancestor of maize.
Why Were Plants Domesticated?

Optimal Foraging Theory, the idea that
foragers select foods that maximize the
overall return rate.
 Return
rate, the amount of energy acquired by
a forager per unit of harvesting/processing time.
An Aché man hunting
Why Were Plants Domesticated?
 Predicts
that as high-return-rate resources
(e.g. large game animals) become scarce,
foragers add lower-return-rate resources (e.g.
seeds) to their diet.
Why Were Plants Domesticated?

Coevolution, an evolutionary theory that argues
that changes in social systems are best
understood as mutual natural selection among
components rather than as a linear cause-andeffect sequence.
Why Were Plants Domesticated?


David Rindos argues that because of some plants’
genetic composition and because of how they
must be harvested.
The very act of harvesting them results in
unintentional selection in such a way that the
plants become dependent on humans for survival.
Why Were Plants Domesticated?

Each of the preceding paradigms explain the
origins of agriculture privileging the power of
human intent and conditions of environment,
demography, and selection.

Population and environment may not be the only
relevant variables.
Why Were Plants Domesticated?

Brian Hayden suggests that agriculture arose as a
way to increase productivity so that certain
individuals could garner prestige and power.

New technologies enabled hunter-gatherers to
harvest resources efficiently and build food
surpluses.
The Origins of Agriculture in the
Near East

Fertile Crescent, a broad arc of mountains in
Israel, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Iran where wild
wheat, barley, and other domesticated plants are
found today.
The Origins of Agriculture in the
Near East

Younger Dryas, a climatic interval, 13,000
to 11,600 BP, characterized by a rapid return
to cooler and drier, but highly variable,
climatic conditions.
The Origins of Agriculture in the
Near East

Natufian, a cultural manifestation in the
Levant (the southwest Fertile Crescent)

Dating from 14,500 to 11,600 BP and
consisting of the first appearance of settled
villages, trade goods, and possibly early
cultivation of domesticated wheat, but
lacking pottery.
The Origins of Agriculture in the
Near East


We can’t tell exactly when intentional agriculture
began, because it’s difficult to distinguish wild
wheat and barley from early domesticated
forms.
The best evidence suggests that a fulltime
agricultural economy began about 10,000 to
9,000 BP.
The Origins of Agriculture in the
Near East

Neolithic, the ancient period during which people
began using ground stone tools, manufacturing
ceramics, and relying on domesticated plants and
animals– literally, the “New Stone Age”—coined by
Sir John Lubbock (in 1865).

Bar-Yosef estimates that by 9000 years ago, a
growing population required that the full
productivity of agriculture be harnessed, and
agricultural communities appeared.
The Origins of Agriculture in the Near
East: Comparing the Paradigms

Late Pleistocene foragers understood that
seeds produce plants, but the knowledge
is not sufficient to explain the origins of
agriculture.
The Origins of Agriculture in the Near
East: Comparing the Paradigms

Childe suggests that climatic change was
important;

Foragers could not have become agriculturalists
without a supportive environment that did not
occur until the early Holocene.

The Younger Dryas altered the Natufian lifeways,
requiring a formerly sedentary foraging population
to make land more productive through cultivation.
The Origins of Agriculture in the Near
East: Comparing the Paradigms

Evidence from Natufian settlements
suggests that population growth caused
some groups to become sedentary on
localities that included stands of wild wheat
and barley.

Population pressure on resources may have
required people to expand diets and rely
heavily on plants.
The Origins of Agriculture in the Near
East: Comparing the Paradigms

Agriculture may have helped make possible
feasts that, in turn, helped to form social
alliances that were critical too survival in
climatically uncertain time of Younger Dryas.

Humans intended to increase productivity
and forage well, leading them to agriculture.
Why Did the Archaic State
Arise?

The state is a strong, usually highly centralized
government, with professional ruling class, largely
divorced from the bonds of kinship that
characterize simpler societies.

Residential patterns based on occupational
specialization, rather than blood or affinal
relationships.

Affinal, relatives by marriage rather than blood.
Major Primary Archaic States
Why Did the Archaic State Arise:
The Irrigation Hypothesis

Irrigation hypothesis, proposed by Karl
Wittfogel (1896–1988), attributes the origin of the
state to the administrative demands of irrigation.

The need for coordinated labor, massive
construction, and so forth led to increased wealth
and military strength and eventually to the
powerful ruling bureaucracy that characterized
state development.
Irrigation Hypothesis
Why Did the Archaic State Arise: The
Warfare and Circumscription Hypothesis

Warfare and Circumscription Hypothesis,
proposed by ethnologist Robert Carneiro.

Attributes the origin of the state to the
administrative burden of warfare conducted for
conquest as a response to geographic limits on
arable land in the face of a rising population.
Why Did the Archaic State Arise: The
Warfare and Circumscription Hypothesis


Carneiro’s initial premise stipulates that political
change of lasting significance arises only from
coercive pressure.
And warfare, he suggested, is the only mechanism
powerful enough to impose bureaucratic authority
on a large scale.
Carneiro’s Circumscription and Warfare
Hypothesis
Why Did the Archaic State Arise A
Multicausal Theory
Allen Johnson and Timothy Earle list three
conditions necessary for archaic states to form:
1.
High population density that strains the food
production system.
2.
A need for a system of integration.
3.
The possibility of controlling the economy to
permit financing of institutions and support a
ruling class.
Given these conditions, any number of specific
processes can result in a state.
Multicausal Origins of the Archaic State
The Role of Ideology in State Formation

Ideology, a set of beliefs

often political, religious, or cosmological in
nature

that rationalizes exploitive relations between
classes or social groups.
The Role of Ideology in State Formation

In states, ideologies are often linked to
religion; elite tied themselves to deities.

When they take on a life of their own, they
can play a causal role in the development of
states.
The Maya: A Case Study of State
Formation
A map of the lowland
Maya region showing the
location of some major
Maya sites
The Maya: A Case Study of State
Formation

Maize horticulturalists moved into the area about
4000 years ago.

Evidence suggests early farmers were egalitarian.

Middle Preclassic Period (2900-2300 BP)
population increase, trade, and sedentary, slashand-burn horticulturalists precipitated change to
small chiefdoms.
The Maya: A Case Study of State
Formation

Ancestor worship, a religion in which one’s
deceased ancestors serve as important
intermediaries between the natural and
supernatural.
The Maya: A Case Study of State
Formation

Late Preclassic Period (2300-1750 BP), regional
population grew by 350% and aggregated in large
settlements.

Political organization had no single center, instead
many small centers controlled the territory around
them.
The Maya: A Case Study of State
Formation

Classic Period (1750-1300 BP) characterized by
archaic state.
The Maya: A Case Study of State
Formation
1.
High population density places pressure on the
agricultural economy and, in dry years, can
lead to conflict.
2.
Warfare requires social integration, as do
efforts to ensure the flow of goods and
information between allied centers.
3.
Possibly, as one large center gained the edge
in authority, families moved to it and smaller
centers gave their allegiance in return for
protection.
Summary Questions
1.
What is unilineal evolution and why did
anthropology discard it?
2.
What theories have been proposed to explain the
origin of agriculture?
3.
What theories have been proposed to explain the
origin of the archaic state?
4.
What is the difference between sufficient and
necessary conditions in an explanation?