In The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (2021) David Graeber and David Wengrow point to an almost forgotten concept: heroic societies:
Writing in the 1920s, Chadwick – Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Cambridge, at much the same time J. R. R. Tolkien held that post at Oxford – was initially concerned with why great traditions of epic poetry (Nordic sagas, the works of Homer, the Ramayana) always seemed to emerge among people in contact with and often employed by the urban civilizations of their day, but who ultimately rejected the values of those same civilizations. For a long time, his notion of ‘heroic societies’ fell into a certain disfavour: there was a widespread assumption that such societies did not really exist but were, like the society represented in Homer’s Iliad, retroactively reconstructed in epic literature.
Were there heroic societies really a figment of imagination? I don’t think so, nor do the authors:
But as archaeologists have more recently discovered, there is a very real pattern of heroic burials, indicating in turn an emerging cultural emphasis on feasting, drinking, the beauty and fame of the individual male warrior.80 And it appears time and again around the fringes of urban life, often in strikingly similar forms, over the course of the Eurasian Bronze Age. All these cultures were aristocracies, without any centralized authority or principle of sovereignty (or, maybe, some largely symbolic, formal one). Instead of a single centre, we find numerous heroic figures competing fiercely with one another for retainers and slaves. [...] We are witnessing the first known emergence of what Hector Munro Chadwick famously called ‘heroic societies’ and, moreover, these societies all seem to have emerged just where his analysis tells us to expect them: on the margins of bureaucratically ordered cities.
The lack of a central authority is a strong indication that we are seeing societies based on segmentary lineages here, very similar to pastoralist societies like the Nuer, who do not acknowledge any centralised power. There are some other marked contrasts between these heroic societies and the bureaucratic civilisations on whose margins they flourished.
From 3100 bc, across the hilly country of what’s now eastern Turkey, and then in other places on the edge of urban civilization, we see evidence for the rise of a warrior aristocracy, heavily armed with metal spears and swords, living in what appear to be hill forts or small palaces. All traces of bureaucracy disappear. In their place we find not just aristocratic households – reminiscent of Beowulf’s mead hall, or indeed the Pacific Northwest Coast in the nineteenth century – but for the first time also tombs of men who, in life, were clearly considered heroic individuals of some sort, accompanied to the afterlife by prodigious quantities of metal weaponry, treasures, elaborate textiles and drinking gear.
Everything about these tombs and their makers, living on the frontiers of urban life, bespeaks a spirit of extravagance. Copious amounts of fine food, drink and personal jewellery were deposited. There are signs that such funerals could spiral into spectacles of competitive one-upmanship, as what must have been priceless trophies, heirlooms and prizes of unparalleled magnificence were offered up or even intentionally destroyed; some, too, are accompanied by subsidiary burials of those apparently slaughtered at the graveside as offerings.
If we use Salomon Schwarz’s map of values and my model of evolutionary types, we can see that these heroic societies valued material wealth, visible success and certainly having a good time. Those bureaucratic civilisations on whose margin they flourished on the other hand consisted mostly of evolutionary farmer types who valued security, rules and conformity.
Herders on the margins of farmer societies tended to develop heroic honour societies that valued martial qualities and bravery.
‘Politics’, in such societies, was composed of a history of personal debts of loyalty or vengeance between heroic individuals; all, moreover, focus on game-like contests as the primary business of ritual, indeed political, life. Often, massive amounts of loot or wealth were squandered, sacrificed or given away in such theatrical performances. Moreover, all such groups explicitly resisted certain features of nearby urban civilizations: above all, writing, for which they tended to substitute poets or priests who engaged in rote memorization or elaborate techniques of oral composition.
Here again, we see typical patterns of pastoral segmentary lineages: shifting alliances, loyalty and retaliation. The downside of such heroic societies was a high degree of violence, looting and high competition over females. It’s all very reminiscent of Mediaeval Chivalry that arose after pastoralist barbarian tribes wreaked havoc in Europe and left their genetic legacy.
Another legacy those heroic herders probably left is feudalism when they made further inroads into bureaucratic farmer societies. This went hand in hand with
- Rise of a warrior class
- Decentralisation of power
- Protectionism (pastoralist - farmer/lord - serf)
The decentralisation force is the reason why pastoralist empires, like those of the Mongols and Vikings, didn’t last very long. When pastoralist power began to crumble, the farmer hierarchy began to have the upper hand again. There are a lot of similarities between the Mafia and feudalism. In fact, many
believe that the Mafia was formed near the end of Feudalism. The aristocratic feudal lords generally lived in their country mansions and left their lands under the charge of local managers called Gabelloti. These men intimidated the poor men to work the estates for poor wages. One of their methods was to employ local intermediaries who could now be considered as local Mafia Bosses. Most Gabelloti became minor barons but some of the most corrupt ones refused the post and became important Mafiosi. (source)
Indeed, Mafia organisation shows a lot of similarity to segmentary lineages, including clannishness, honour codes and retaliatory culture. Family terms like la famiglia and il padrino (godfather) emphasise symbolic kinship ties. Whereas farmer types would be mostly willing to fulfil their duty and assume a position in a hierarchical state, pastoralist types would be more prone to form a “state within the state” with their own rules.
Check out my book Understanding History: Herders, Horticulturalists and Hunter-Gatherers for more:
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