Date:          Sat, 18 May 1996 22:56:21 +0000
Subject:       Engels, pastoralists


This is just a short note on a topic which came up here a couple
of weeks ago (or, actually, a side issue in the continuing
discussion about Engels, foragers, etc.).

In _Origin of the Family, etc_, Engels uses a construct about
social evolution which was pretty widely accepted in the 19th
century in which humans progress from being "savages" (hunter-
gatherers), through "barbarism" (pastoral societies) to
"civilization" (agriculture). I think that either Johann
Gottfried von Herder or his successor (I wrote "follower", but I
don't think that's quite accurate) Leopold von Ranke originated
this, but I'm not sure. It's been years since I read this stuff,
so take any details with a grain of salt. Herder and Ranke were
concerned with building a "multicultural" framework for studying
world history and looking for common patterns of development, as
well as tracing the continuity in development of individual
cultures. (The 18th-century Herder was much more
"internationalist" than the 19th-century Ranke in this respect,
which may or may not tell us something about the influence of
imperialism on the historian's trade.)

In any case, all this early historical theory was built (as all
theory is) on extrapolation from known facts and included the
biases of the society from which the historians came. Thus it
seemed perfectly natural to Europeans tracing their heritage to
Rome that "barbarian" pastoralism would represent an earlier and
less "advanced" stage of human development than "civilized"
agriculture. After all, weren't the barbarians who sacked Rome
infinitely more backward than the noble Romans?

Most cultural geographers and prehistorians today reject the
scheme of forager-pastoralist-farmer as a line of development. It
is, or was when I studied this a quarter century ago, widely
accepted that agriculture predates pastoralism. The process of
domesticating animals begins with having a surplus of food to
feed juvenile animals who have been carried into the village as
captives from a hunt and the ability to select those animals to
be raised and those to be slaughtered in order to alter the basic
characteristics of the animal species. You just can't do that by
following a wild herd around.

We can see validation for this view if we look at pastoralists
and farmers today. I don't know of any pastoral society which
isn't critically dependent upon inputs of trade goods from cities
and villagers. Contrarily, few farmers actually *need* (as
opposed to *desire*) the inputs from pastoralists. Pastoral
society is an auxiliary to agricultural society, and probably
always was.

The enormous pastoral civilizations of the past were strongly
characterized by their role in trade between agricultural or
urban areas. The successive empires of Scythians, Huns, Mongols,
Turks, etc., which dominated the south Russian steppes between
Europe and China are the clearest example of this. If you look at
museum exhibits of materials from ancient Scythian gravesites,
you see finely worked gold jewelry. Did the Scythians mine gold
and work the jewelry on horseback as they rode around? Doesn't
seem likely. They got it as part of their profit from dominating
the "silk route".

I believe that Engels' basic premises were and are correct, but a
lot of his specific statements are based on 19th century
extrapolations from insufficient facts and it's a mistake to get
sucked into trying to defend them simply because Engels made
them.

In particular, almost all 19th-century writers assumed that
contemporary non-agricultural societies were "remnants" of pre-
agricultural human society as a whole, rather than seeing them as
highly-evolved and distinct adaptations to different
circumstance. I once had someone explain to me in great detail
her theory that Eskimos were descendants of Cro-Magnon "man"
because they used oil lamps similar to those found in French and
Spanish cave sites from the ice age. She assumed that as the
glaciers melted, these folks had just kept moving north to
maintain their culture, then moved west from Europe through
Greenland to North America. I don't think anyone who has
seriously studied Inuit culture and history would support this
theory, but it's typical of the way entire theories of history
were elaborated not so long ago.

I'm running quite a sleep deficit, so I think I'll quit before
this gets any more incoherent. I think my basic point is clear.

Tom

"Behind every great fortune is a great crime."
    ---Balzac


Tom Condit
<tomcondit-AT-igc.apc.org>
1801-A Cedar Street
Berkeley, California 94703
510-845-7251


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