Chapter Three - Add Technology and Bake For Five Millennia

The propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another ... is common to all men -- Adam Smith

What is society, whatever its form may be? The product of men's reciprocal action ... Assume a particular state of development in the productive faculties of man and you will get a particular form of commerce and consumption. -- Karl Marx

When Europeans arrived in the new world, they didn't realize what an interesting natural experiment they had stumbled upon. After migrating across the then-dry Bering Strait in the late Stone Age, the ancestors of the Native Americans were cut off from the Old World by the flooding of their overland route around 10,000 years ago. There their cultures developed in isolation, and one would assume that any universal trends would be evident both there and in the Old World's cultures.

Two Kinds of Eskimo

Another example of circumstances driving cultural evolution can be seen in two types of Eskimo, the Nunamiut and the Tareumiut. The two tribes were closely related and shared a language. The major difference was that the Nanamiut lived inland and hunted caribou, and the Tareumiut lived on the coast and hunted wales. Hunting wales is a multi-person and even multi-boat undertaking, and results in large amounts of food at irregular intervals. Both of these factors beg cooperation -- many people must be gathered together to hunt wales, and since it can be an irregular food source, 'reciprocal altruism' through feeding those who may be able to feed you later makes sense. Indeed, the Tareumiut had a much more complex social structure, with villiages of 100-200 people as opposed to the Nanamiut's family-sized bands.

The Northwest Coast Indians

The Indians of the US Pacific Northwest achieved some of the most complex societies of any hunter-gatherers ever recorded. A major cause of this was the amazing bounty of fish, shellfish, and wild game in the area. This abundance allowed them a surplus with which to pay others for work, creating divisions of labor, and allowing for large work projects. While most families did hunt and gather, they also had a trade that was passed down, from carpentry to weaving to boatmaking. They used boats and harpoons to hunt wales, and built gigantic salmon traps. They are perhaps best-known for their 'potlatch' festivals, where food and prized posessions were heaped on rivals, and even on bonfires. All of this excess wealth was possible, however, due to NZS interactions, including centralized planning by powerful chiefs.

The Big Man Goes to Market

The 'Chiefs' or 'Big Men' of the Northwest Indians took a portion of hunting and gathering proceeds and, after skimming some off the top for themselves, used this surplus for the public good. Even in an economy with no money, the Big Man financed public works projects (such as the previously mentioned canoes and salmon traps), threw public feasts, and even collected durable goods which were traded for food with neighboring chiefdoms in times of need, enabling a 'diffusion of risk' even wider than the giraffe-feasts of the Kung San or the sharing of wale blubber by the Tareumiut.

Freaks of Nature?

Although the Northwest Coast Indians did have seemingly excessive rituals, at their roots they provided NZS gains. Giving away huge quantities of wealth seems excessive, but social status has always been at the heart of human culture. Also, these rituals are not isolated to the Northwest Indians, but have been seen in tribes in New Guinea and elsewhere. These Indians also pose a conundrum for anthropoligists because they seem to deviate from the normal steps in growth of societal complexity. They have a diverse economy, hierarchical social structure, and division of labor, but not domesticated plants. But, although they don't fit neatly into the mold of cultural evolution, they show the same trends towards more complexity and more efficient production of wealth through greater and greater NZS interactions.

The Aberrant Kung

Why did the Northwest Coast indians achieve such a level of sophistication when almost all other hunter-gatherer societies studied remained at a 'relatively egalitarian' level of complexity (ie no large social hierarchy)? Probably because these were the only hunter-gatherer societies left by the time our culture became interested in studying them. The Kung and other modern-day hunter gatherers live in particlarly barren areas, as hunter-gatherer societies living in more fertile areas either progressed to agricultural societies or were wiped out by agricultural societies who coveted their land. In the course of history, the Northwest Coast indians are probably the rule, and the Kung the exception. Current archeological evidence supports this theory, showing that hunter-gatherer societies show an increase in complexity over time.

An Evolutionary Mirror

At this point, it seems accurate to state that the deveolpment of culture in the New World closely mirrors development in the Old World. The major difference is the time humans had inhabited the area, and possibly environmental differences. Every culture studied, however, shows the general trend towards advanced technology and greater social complexity over time. Even aboriginal australians, living in an isolated area with few natural resources, show trends towards advanced technology (boomerang, anyone?). Also, if we look at the differences between New World cultures, we can see that they are far more a factor of environmental than genetic circumstance -- the Shoshone and Aztec, representing two ends of new world societal complexity, have very common languages, generally denoting close genetic ties. Once again, evidence is given that the idea of a 'static' or non-materialistic culture is a myth. All humans are materialistic, and all will advance over time.