The theme of war in a primitive society. The origin of war: conflicts in a primitive society
In modern science, there are several theories of the origin of man. The most reasoned is the labor theory of the origin of man, formulated by F. Engels. Labor theory emphasizes the role of labor in the formation of the collectives of the first people, their rallying and the formation of new connections between them. According to this concept, work activity influenced the development of a person's hand, and the need for new means of communication led to the development of language. The appearance of man is thus associated with the beginning of the production of tools of labor.
The process of anthropogenesis (human origin) in its development went through three stages: 1) the emergence of anthropoid human ancestors; 2) the appearance of the most ancient and ancient people; 3) the emergence of a modern type of man. Anthropogenesis was preceded by an intensive evolution of higher apes in different directions. As a result of evolution, several new species of monkeys arose, including Dryopithecus. Australopithecus originates from Driopithecus, whose remains were found in Africa.
Australopithecines were distinguished by a relatively large brain volume (550-600 cc), walking on their hind limbs and using natural objects as tools. Their fangs and jaws were less developed than those of other monkeys. Australopithecus were omnivores and hunted small animals. Like other anthropomorphic monkeys, they united in herds. Australopithecus lived 4-2 million years ago.
The second stage of anthropogenesis is associated with Pithecanthropus ("monkey-man") and related atlanthropus and synanthropus. Pithecanthropus can already be called the most ancient people, since they, unlike Australopithecus, made stone tools. The brain volume of Pithecanthropus was about 900 cubic meters. cm, and for Sinanthropus - the late form of Pithecanthropus - 1050 cubic meters. see Pithecanthropus retained some of the features of monkeys - a low cranial vault, a sloping forehead, the absence of a chin protrusion. The remains of Pithecanthropus are found in Africa, Asia and Europe. It is possible that the ancestral home of man was in Africa and Southeast Asia. The most ancient people lived 750-200 thousand years ago.
The Neanderthal was the next step in anthropogenesis. They call him ancient man. The brain volume of a Neanderthal is from 1200 to 1600 cubic meters. cm - is approaching the volume of the brain of a modern person. But in the Neanderthal, unlike modern humans, the structure of the brain was primitive, the frontal lobes of the brain were not developed. The hand was rough and massive, which limited the Neanderthal's ability to use tools. Neanderthals spread widely across the Earth, inhabiting different climatic zones. They lived 250-40 thousand years ago. Scientists believe that not all Neanderthals were the ancestors of modern man; some of the Neanderthals were a dead-end branch of development.
A man of a modern physical type - Cro-Magnon - appeared at the third stage of anthropogenesis. These are people of tall stature, with a straight gait, with a sharply protruding chin. The volume of the Cro-Magnon's brain was equal to 1400 - 1500 cubic meters. see Cro-Magnons appeared about 100 thousand years ago. Probably, their homeland was Asia Minor and adjacent regions.
At the last stage of anthropogenesis, race genesis occurs - the formation of three human races. The Caucasian, Mongoloid and Negroid races can serve as examples of how humans adapt to their natural environment. Races differ in color of skin, hair, eyes, features of the structure of the face and physique and other features. All three races also developed in the Late Paleolithic, but the process of racial formation continued in the future.
A primitive tribal community is an association of people on the basis of blood kinship, joint collective labor, common ownership of tools and products of production. Equality of social status, unity of interests and cohesion of members of the clan proceeded from these conditions. In the common property, which did not have any legal form, the primitive community contained certain territories, tools, household utensils, and dwellings. Production products, food - were distributed equally by all members of the clan, taking into account the merits of each. The clans could move from one territory to another, but their organization was preserved. To a certain extent, there was personal ownership of weapons, jewelry, and some other items. The productive forces and tools of labor were extremely primitive: hunting, gathering products of nature, fishing.
The genus was the main, independent community. Separate clans were united in broader associations - fratia. Phratia was dismembered into several daughter clans and united them by the original clan, indicating the origin of all of them from a common ancestor. Several related phrases made up the tribe. F. Engels noted that the clan, fratia and tribe represented three degrees of blood relationship naturally connected with each other.
Power in Fratia and the tribe was based on the same principles as in the tribal community. The Council of the Fratia was a general meeting of all its members and in some cases was formed from the elders of the clans that were part of the Fratia. At the head of the tribe was a council, which included representatives of the fraties - elders, military leaders, priests.
5)
Civilizations of the Ancient East. The Ancient East has become the cradle of modern civilization. The first states, the first cities, writing, stone architecture, world religions and much more appear here, without which it is impossible to imagine the current human community. The first states arise in the valleys of large rivers. Farming in these areas was very productive, but this required irrigation work - to drain, irrigate, erect dams and keep the entire irrigation system in order. One community could not cope with this. There was a growing need to unite all communities under the control of a single state.
For the first time this happens in two places at once, independently of each other - in Mesopotamia (the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers) and Egypt at the end of the 4th-3rd millennia BC. e. Later, the state appears in India, in the valley of the Indus River, and at the turn of the 3rd - 2nd millennium BC. e. - in China. These civilizations have received the name of river civilizations in science.
The most important center of the ancient statehood was the Mesopotamia region. Unlike other civilizations, Mesopotamia was open to all migrations and trends. From here, trade routes opened and innovations spread to other lands. The civilization of Mesopotamia continuously expanded and involved new peoples, while other civilizations were more closed. Thanks to this, Western Asia is gradually becoming a flagship in socio-economic development. A potter's wheel and wheel, bronze and iron metallurgy, a war chariot and new forms of writing appeared here. Scientists trace the influence of Mesopotamia on Egypt and the civilization of ancient India.
Farmers settled Mesopotamia in the 8th millennium BC. e. Gradually they learned to drain the wetlands. In the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates there is no stone, forests, metals, but they are very rich in grain. Residents of Mesopotamia exchanged grain for items missing in the household in the process of trade with neighbors. Stone and wood were replaced with clay. They built houses from clay, made various household items, wrote on clay tables.
At the end of the 4th millennium BC. e. in the Southern Mesopotamia, several political centers arose, which united into the state of Sumer. Throughout its ancient history, the Mesopotamia region was the arena of a fierce struggle, during which power was seized by a city or conquerors who came from outside. From the II millennium BC e. the leading role in the region begins to play the city of Babylon, becoming a mighty power under King Hammurabi. Then Assyria was strengthened, which from the XIV to VII centuries. BC e. was one of the leading states of Mesopotamia. After the fall of the Assyrian state, Babylon becomes stronger again - the New Babylonian kingdom appears. Persians - immigrants from the territory of modern Iran - managed to conquer Babylonia and in the VI century. BC e. found a huge Persian kingdom.
The civilization of ancient Egypt owes its appearance to the world's largest river Nile and its annual floods.
Egypt was divided into Upper (Nile Valley) and Lower (Nile Delta). Along the Nile, the first state associations arose - the nomes, the centers of which were temples. As a result of a long struggle, the nomes of Upper Egypt united and annexed Lower Egypt.
China as a state was formed in the Yellow River Valley. Another great Chinese river, the Yangtze, which flows to the south, was developed later. The Yellow River very often changed its course, flooding vast areas. Harnessing the river required hard work building dams and dams.
Egypt and China, despite their remoteness from each other, have a number of common features, which can be explained by several reasons. These countries initially had an ethnically homogeneous population, the state apparatus was very stable; a deified ruler stood at the head of the state. In Egypt it is Pharaoh - the son of the Sun, in China - Van, the son of Heaven. Within the framework of both civilizations, there was total control over the population, which was involved in the execution of heavy duties. The bulk of the population of Egypt was made up of community members, who were called "servants of the king" and were obliged to donate the entire crop to the state, receiving food or land for cultivation. A similar system functioned in China.
A huge role in a state of this type was played by the priests, officials, who controlled the apparatus and distributed food among the entire population. In Egypt, it was the priests who played the main role in the process of distributing material wealth. The temples wielded considerable power, which allowed them to successfully oppose the Center. In contrast to Egypt, in China the religious component of the power of the state apparatus faded into the background.
In India, in the valley of the Indus River, a proto-Indian civilization took shape. Large irrigation systems were created here and big cities were built. The ruins of two cities were found near the modern settlements of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro and bear these names. Civilization has reached a high level of development here. This is evidenced by the presence of a craft, a sewer system, and a written language. However, the writing of the proto-Indian civilization, unlike the hieroglyphs of Egypt and the cuneiform of Mesopotamia, has not yet been solved by scientists, and this civilization continues to remain a mystery to us. The reasons for the death of the civilization of Ancient India, which existed for several centuries, are also unknown.
In the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. e. the tribes of the Aryans invaded India. The Aryan language belongs to the Indo-European language family and is close to the Slavic languages. The Aryans settled in the Ganges valley, subjugating the local population. The arriving Arians lived mainly in a tribal system. At the head of the tribes were the leaders - the rajas, who relied on a layer of Kshatriya warriors. The brahmana priests fought with the kshatriyas for the first place in society and the state.
The Aryans, not wanting to dissolve among the large local population, were forced to establish a system of varnas. According to this system, the population was divided into four varnas - brahmana priests, kshatriya warriors, vaisya producers, and also sudras - the conquered local population. Belonging to varna was inherited, and it was impossible to change it. Marriages have always taken place between members of the same varna.
The varna system contributed to the conservation of Indian society. Since the varnas took over part of the functions of the state, the state apparatus in India did not become as strong and influential as in other civilizations of the Ancient East.
A new form of civilization is emerging in the Eastern Mediterranean, different from the classical river states. The most ancient centers of agriculture and cattle breeding existed here, and the first urban centers also appear here. The city of Jericho in Palestine is known as the oldest city in the world (VIII millennium BC). The Eastern Mediterranean is a region located at the crossroads of major trade routes linking Asia, Europe and Africa. 33
From the III millennium BC e. the cities of the Eastern Mediterranean are becoming important centers of transit trade. The rich cities and fertile lands of this region constantly served as the object of the claims of the major powers - Egypt, Assyria, the Hittite kingdom (on the territory of Asia Minor). The Eastern Mediterranean is divided into three parts - Syria in the north, Palestine in the south, and Phenicia in the center. The Phoenicians managed to become experienced sailors, were engaged in transit trade, established their colonies throughout the Mediterranean. The Phoenicians invented lettering to help them formalize trade deals. This alphabet formed the basis of all modern alphabets.
6)
Ancient civilization.
Greece. The most ancient civilization in Europe originated on the islands of the Aegean Sea and on the Balkan Peninsula and is known as the Crete-Mycenaean civilization (by the name of the centers - the islands of Crete and Mycenae, cities in southern Greece). The Cretan-Mycenaean civilization was a typical ancient Eastern civilization that existed in the 2nd millennium BC. e. Crete, like Phenicia, became famous as a naval deryasava with a mighty fleet. The death of the Cretan-Mycenaean civilization is associated with a number of natural disasters and the invasion of Greece and the Aegean islands by northern tribes. This invasion led to the establishment of more backward tribal relations on the ruins of civilization. XII - IX centuries BC e. known in Greece as the Dark Ages.
In the VIII-VI centuries. BC e. in Greece, the ancient civilization began to form. The appearance of iron and the corresponding tools played an important role in its development. In Greece, there is not enough land for cultivation, so cattle breeding and then craft were widely developed here. The Greeks, familiar with maritime affairs, were actively engaged in trade, which gradually led to the development of the surrounding territories along the coast. Due to the catastrophic shortage of land resources, the Greeks were forced to establish colonies in Italy, Asia Minor, and the Black Sea region.
With the division of labor and the appearance of a surplus product, the clan community is replaced by a neighboring community, not a rural one, but an urban one. The Greeks called this community a polis. Gradually, the policy was formalized into a city-state. There were hundreds of policies in Greece. Colonies were also created along this pattern. Within the framework of the polis, a fierce struggle took place between the tribal nobility, who did not want to give up their power, and the demos - the ordinary members of the community.
The Greeks were aware of their unity - they called their homeland Hellas, and themselves - Hellenes. They had a single pantheon of Olympian gods and general Hellenic sports. However, all this did not prevent them from regularly fighting among themselves. One of the main features of Hellenic culture is the principle of competition and the desire for primacy, which is not typical for the civilizations of the East. A situation developed in the policy when its power depended on citizens, who, in turn, were imposed certain duties, but at the same time significant rights.
Greece was not united by one policy - this was prevented by their fragmentation and disunity. As a result, Greece was conquered first by Macedonia and then by Rome. But the Roman state, which conquered Greece, experienced the strongest influence of Greek culture. The achievements of Greek culture ultimately formed the basis of all European culture and civilization.
Ancient Rome. Rome was founded in 753 BC. e. in the area of Latium in the center of Italy. In the course of its development, Rome borrowed the culture and achievements of its neighbors. The Etruscans, Rome's northern neighbors, had a particularly significant influence on Rome. According to legend, the Etruscans were immigrants from Asia Minor.
In the course of a long and stubborn struggle, Rome first conquered Latium, then the neighboring regions. Rome managed to win victories thanks to an effective state and military organization. Using its location in the center of the Apennine Peninsula, Rome managed to separate the forces of its enemies and in turn conquered the Etruscans, the Celts of Italy, Great Greece (as the Greek colonies in Italy were called) and other tribes.
In the III century. BC e. Rome, having subjugated all of Italy, faced Carthage, a Phoenician colony in northern Africa. In the course of three fierce wars, Rome defeated its rival and became the most powerful power in the Mediterranean. Lacking the culture of their rivals,
Rome resorted to borrowing it, bringing its own state order and structure to the conquered lands.
In the II - I centuries. n. e. Rome experienced a serious crisis. The Roman state was organized in the likeness of a polis. However, it is obvious that if the polis system can be effective for the city and its districts, then it is absolutely not suitable for a huge power. After a difficult and prolonged civil war, imperial power was established in Rome. In the era of the empire, Rome reaches its greatest power, uniting the lands of Western and Southern Europe, North Africa and Western Asia under its rule. A large role in this period of the history of Ancient Rome begins to play the slave-owning way.
In the III century. n. e. The Roman Empire experienced a severe shock that engulfed all spheres of the life of Roman society. The onslaught of barbarians on the borders of the empire, associated with the Great Migration of Nations, and profound changes in the life of the empire led to a deep and irreversible crisis of ancient civilization. As a result, the Roman Empire split into two parts - Western and Eastern, and in the 5th century. n. e. The Western Roman Empire fell. 476 - the year when the last Roman emperor was overthrown - is considered to be the milestone year between antiquity and the Middle Ages. The Eastern Roman Empire, centered in Constantinople, became the legal successor of Rome.
7) The first millennium of European history is full of important events related to the crisis of the Roman state and the progressive movement of the Barbaricum. A significant part of the Old World was going through the era of the Great Nations Migration. By the beginning of the Migration, the western and southern parts of the European continent were occupied by the ancient civilization that existed within the state framework of the Roman Empire. In Central and Eastern Europe lived, living in a pre-state system, Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, Finno-Ugric, Iranian, and other tribes. On the European continent, the Great Migration was marked by the movement of the Germans. Almost simultaneously with them, numerous nomadic tribes and tribal associations poured from Asia to Europe, causing significant movements among the local peoples.
Many peoples, in search of new habitats and easy profit, left their homes and "embarked on those great and fabulous wanderings that marked the beginning of the formation of peoples in ancient and new Europe." The Roman Empire, torn apart by internal contradictions, became the object of aspirations of the barbarian tribes. At first they were the Germans, who were replaced by the Huns, and later by the Avars and Slavs. In the course of the Great Migration of Nations, the death of ancient civilization and the fall of the Roman Empire took place. In its western part, "barbarian kingdoms" were formed, created by the Germans. In the east, the Byzantine Empire was formed, resigned to the loss of a significant part of its territory south of the Danube, occupied by the Slavs (and partly by the Turkic-speaking Bulgarians). During the Resettlement, the Germans and Slavs settled in a vast territory from Britain, Gaul and Spain to the Gulf of Finland, the Upper Volga and the Don. A new medieval civilization was formed. As a result of the mixing of the Latinized population of the former Roman provinces with the barbarians, the Romanesque peoples were formed. All this had a significant impact on the ethnic map of Europe: many peoples disappeared from the face of the earth. The political and ethnic map of Europe that emerged after the Great Migration of Peoples basically continues to exist to this day, because the history of Europe no longer knew ethnopolitical metamorphoses like the Great Migration of Peoples.
A systematic study of the Great Migration of Peoples allows us to define it as a special period of historical development, when in a significant historical space (no longer Antiquity, but not yet the Middle Ages), limited by a specific chronological framework (II-VII centuries) and a certain territory (Europe, Asia, Africa ), the interaction of barbarism and civilization has reached its most intense phase. The result of this interaction, as a consequence of the interpenetration and mutual destruction of the Roman and barbarian worlds, was the emergence of a new type of civilization.
The Great Migration of Nations as a temporary "gap" between Antiquity and the Middle Ages is divided into three stages. The first (II-IV centuries) - "German", covers the time from the Marcomannian Wars to the Battle of Adrianople. The second (IV-V centuries) - "Hunnic", between the Battle of Adrianople and the Battle of the Catalaunian fields. The third stage (VI-VII centuries) - "Slavic", is associated with the movement of Slavic tribes in Eastern, Southeastern and Central Europe. The stages of Resettlement differ in the nature of the ethnic composition of the participants in the Resettlement, the position of the migrating tribes, the main accents of confrontation and interaction, the direction of migrations and their results.
In the era of the Migration of peoples, the tanta scriptorum turba continued to look for an answer to the trivial question - what is hidden under the capacious concept of "barbarian". As you know, the associative image of the "barbarian" was formed by ancient historical thought already before the beginning of the Migration. The semantics of the term was revealed within the framework of the antithesis "Hellenes - barbarians", "Romans - barbarians". Three circles of associations made the perception of this image automatic. The first is ethnic. “Barbarian” is a foreigner, a stranger, a person living outside the borders of a given state. The second circle is ethical. It consisted in the formula: "a barbarian is not a Roman", he was considered a barbarian who did not have Paideia, Greek upbringing and education. And, finally, the third circle is philological. Ignorance of Greek and Latin is a sure sign of barbarism.
The term "barbarians" was used by the contemporaries of the Migration as the most general definition of a conglomerate of tribes inhabiting both the near and far periphery of the ancient world. The image of a barbarian during the Migration Period traditionally followed the opposition “barbarians - not Romans”. The contrast between the Barbaricum and the ancient world at this time reached its utmost acuteness and tension. In general, the substantive characterization of the barbarians was based on the balance of rejection and interest. This tendency was reflected in the vocabulary of the writings of both Latin and Greek-speaking authors. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the concept of "barbarians" was tied to the military context and, as a rule, was accompanied by the words "destroyed", "besieged", "devastated", "attacked". In the course of the resettlement of barbarian tribes in the empire, the frequency of its use was noticeably reduced. It does not at all follow from this that the barrier of mutual alienation between the Romans and the barbarians has disappeared. “Barbarians” were perceived as a field of special danger already inside the empire, although the epicenter of barbarism (Barbavron, barbarikou cwvrou, barbaricum solum), according to contemporaries, was not in the empire, but outside it. Barbaricum solum is primarily a space for the movement of barbarians, moreover, continuous movement. The contemporaries of the Great Migration attributed not all peoples different from the Romans to barbarians, but only savages, inhabitants of distant countries. Barbara as such was characterized precisely by his "habitat" - Barbaricum. The typical environment of a barbarian is a thicket, difficult to access, and therefore fraught with danger, rich in vegetation, and therefore dark. The barbaricum, the habitat of the barbarians, featured large uncultivated areas or gloomy areas located at the extreme reaches of the earth. All this, according to the Romans, hindered the emergence and development of civilization, contributed to the preservation of a primitive way of life among the inhabitants of Barbaricum. The change in the attitude of contemporaries towards barbarians during the Migration was reflected in the frequency of use of the word "barbarian" itself. As the barbarians settled on Roman soil, the use of other equivalent words instead of the concept of "barbarians" became indicative. For example, the commonly used words manus globus, gens, populus, exercitus, or specific ethnonyms, often in combination - populus Alamorum, gens Francorum. The concept of "barbarians" did not appear so often, but it is becoming more rigid. “Barbarian” is not just an ignorant foreigner, but above all an extremely aggressive and unpredictable foreigner, a carrier of a destructive principle. The plurality of barbarians, their plurality in the eyes of contemporaries of the Migration was associated with the "crowd", more often - the "army". The crowd, an unorganized mass of barbarians, is characterized as “mixed” (permixta, mixta, immixta), “restless” (tumaltisa), “incapable of fighting” (imbellis). For people of that time, a barbarian is a negative “other”. The model of behavior of the barbarians consisted primarily of aggression. At the same time, against the background of the negative barbarian stereotype, new shades of the image of the barbarian appeared. From the IV century. he is no longer only an enemy, an enemy, but an ally-friend, simmah, ansponde, federate. In the period between Adrianople and Catalauns, the strategy of rejection of the barbarians was built on a more neutral image of the "alien", and not only on the image of the "enemy". Already in the first half of the 5th century. differentiated between "barbarian" and "foreigner". Once again, we note that the concept of "barbarian" as an ignorant, aggressive destroyer was finally formed in the era of Migration. In this generally accepted, everyday meaning, it survived it and, having passed through the Middle Ages and the New Time, has survived to our days.
The Great Migration of Nations, as a systemic process of interaction between Barbaricum and ancient civilization, formed a unique ethnic space. Ethnic space means the entire totality of tribes and peoples associated with a specific historical phenomenon and its image in history. The ethnic space created by the Great Migration was multi-layered. It is represented by Germanic, Alano-Sarmatian, Turkic, Slavic, Italic, Celtic, Reto-Etruscan, Iberian, Scythian, Sindo-Meotian, Thracian, Macedonian, Illyrian, Finno-Ugric, Caucasian, Median, Baltic, Greek, Asia Minor Semitic-Hamitic and African tribes. Among them are the indigenous and alien tribes, inert and dynamic, tribes and peoples inhabiting the lands of the Roman Empire, its provinces, and the Barbaricum tribes.
The inert participants in the Great Migration include, mainly, the inhabitants of the Roman world, all the peoples who inhabited the Roman Empire and its provinces. So, the inhabitants of Italy, practically without changing their habitats, experienced the powerful pressure of Barbaricum and withstood more than one wave of resettlement. A specific feature of the ethnic space of this region was formed already on the eve of the Great Migration. It consisted in the readiness of the numerous peoples inhabiting the Apennine Peninsula for military and trade contacts with the tribes of the Barbaricum. This should include the increased "internal", within the boundaries of the Roman state, population mobility associated with the capture of a vast territory by Rome from the banks of the Rhine, from the Alpine mountains to the ocean coast, including the Iberian Peninsula. The organization of these territories into Roman provinces and their gradual romanization led to the destruction of the ethnic isolation of Gaul and Spain. Here the ethnic space was eroded by the socializing orientation of Roman civilization.
The fragments of the disappeared Celtic world as a whole were aloof from active participation in the migration processes of the Great Migration. It is known that the Celts stubbornly resisted the Romans. However, they could not resist the Germans. After a series of military setbacks, having lost part of the conquered lands, the Celtic population is concentrated in Central Europe from Britain to the Carpathians. It is possible that some Celtic tribes were involved in the campaigns, invasions and predatory expeditions of the Barbaricum tribes, especially at the first stage of the Migration of Peoples. The long raids of the Scottish people on the western shores of Britain, the gradual and methodical development of most of Caledonia by them is not a typical example of the migration activity of the Celts during the Migration era.
Part of the ethnic space of the Great Migration of Peoples was the world of the Thracian, Illyrian and Greek tribes. They can also be attributed to the block of inert participants in the Resettlement. The Thracians, Illyrians and Greeks were located between the Celtic world in the west, the Germanic in the north and the Scythian-Sarmatian world in the east. Repeatedly the areas inhabited by these tribes before and especially during the Great Migration were the epicenter of many migrations. The main events of the first stage of the Resettlement (the Marcomannian wars in the II century, the Gothic invasions of the Balkans in the III century, the struggle of the tribes for Dacia after 270, the Sarmatian wars of the middle of the IV century on the Middle Danube) were accompanied by the resettlement of migrating tribes in the Illyrian and Thracian world ... Through the provinces of Noric and Pannonia inhabited by Illyrians and Celts, stormy multiethnic migratory flows moved to Italy for four centuries.
The population of the Asia Minor and Middle East regions also fit into the context of the ethnic space of the Migration era. The sea raids of the Black Sea tribes shook Cappadocia, Galatia, Bithynia, Pontus, Asia, Kios, Rhodes, Crete, Cyprus to the foundations. The tribes of the European Barbaricum penetrate deep into Asia Minor and come into close contact (not only hostile, but also peaceful) with the other ethnic world of local tribes. There is a clear, unconditional connection between the first steps in the spread of Christianity among the Germans as a result of contacts with the inhabitants of Cappadocia. The role of the Asia Minor and Middle Eastern ethnic component in the Great Migration of Peoples can be defined as passive in relation to migration processes. But these tribes, being mainly "spectators" of the Resettlement, nevertheless gave him an additional impetus, contributing to the spread of Christianity in the barbarian world.
The aggressive, offensive position of Barbaricum was not shared by all the tribes inhabiting it. The world of the Baltic tribes remained inert, indifferent to migrations. At the first stage of the Migration, the calm, measured life of these tribes, their closed, unpretentious way of life were disturbed by the movements of the Goths to the south and the migration wave of Sarmatian tribes to the Middle Danube region. The Balts lacked internal incentives for resettlement. Only the migration of neighboring peoples pushed them to insignificant movements. Being inert in the confrontation "the barbarian world - Roman civilization", the Balts played a significant role in stabilizing the special life cycle of certain regions of the Barbaricum. Indirectly, they contributed to the final rallying of the Slavs - the leaders of the third stage of the Resettlement.
Like the Balts, the Finno-Ugric tribes did not show migration activity until the 6th century. Occupying significant territories from the present regions of Western Belarus to the foothills of the Urals, they were not homogeneous. Different groups of tribes of this ethnic space intersected and interacted with the leaders of the Great Nations Migration - the Germans and the Huns. Some tribes became part of the "state of Ermanarich", others played a significant role in the process of ethnogenesis of the Western Huns. Note that at a time when the Marcomannian Wars (166-180) were raging in Central Europe, marking the beginning of the first stage of the Resettlement, the leader of the next stage of the Resettlement, the Huns, had already begun to form in the steppes of the Southern Urals in the Iranian-speaking and Finno-Ugric ethnic space.
The Germanic, Turkic, Slavic, Alano-Sarmatian tribes were active, dynamic participants in the Great Migration, the leader and catalyst of movement.
The Germanic ethnic space of the Migration era was one of the most significant. Already at the beginning of the Migration, the Germans occupied vast territories, the predominant part of which was marked by extreme geographical and climatic conditions: huge forests, an abundance of rivers, lakes, the unsuitability of many territories for agriculture and animal husbandry. They constantly experienced the military and civilizational onslaught of the Roman world, especially at the turn of the millennium. As a result, a fairly high level of mobility of the Germanic tribes was formed. It reflected primarily the adaptive capabilities and properties of the Germanic ethnic space. In addition, the mobility of the Germans symbolized their special social adaptation. It was not only vital needs that stimulated the tribal movement. Robberies, the conquest of neighbors, robbery in the nearby Roman provinces, the capture of cities, the death of emperors and prominent Roman military leaders are also acts of self-affirmation, demonstration of the power of tribes, from belonging to the traditionally marked winners and leaders of the Barbaricum. The "exposition" of the history of the German ethnic space is very representative. Here is the abundance of tribal names, various forms of manifestation of their activity, a significant geographical range of movements, the pulsating nature of settlement, the multivariance of contractual relations with Rome and Byzantium. In a relatively short historical period, the migration of the Germans covered the main regions of the oecumene - Europe, Asia, North Africa. They contributed to the emergence of major “fault lines”, conflict zones in the European “model” of Resettlement. The migration experience of the Germans is different. It is represented by various types of migrations: the resettlement of tribes, movements of individual squads, "professional" migration (bodyguards at the imperial courts), "business" migration (German artisans and merchants). For many centuries of resettlement, the Germanic ethnic space created a kind of "migration standard", which was used by other tribes as well. For example, it included a "scenario" of the behavior of barbarians in stereotypical situations (campaigns, invasions, negotiations) and a standard set of their claims to the empire. The varying degrees of dependence on the Roman world gave rise to various impulses for consolidation in the Germanic ethnic space. Their highest manifestation was the "big" tribes. In the course of the Resettlement, not only the horizontal dynamics of the barbarian world, its “picture” (involving more and more tribes in the resettlement) changed. Significant changes were taking place inside him. The ethno-social vertical, the internal evolution of the moving tribes, and their potestar development were changing rapidly. The resettlement began with one people, and ended with a completely different one. Many Germanic tribes had to pay a great price for the knowledge of their host of the Roman world.
Waves of migration flows brought a number of Alano-Sarmatian and Turkic tribes to Europe. The Iranian-speaking Alano-Sarmatian tribes played a significant role in the formation of the peoples of Eastern Europe, were one of the components of the ethnogenetic processes of South-Eastern Europe and only indirectly influenced similar processes in the Western European region.
It is quite obvious that water basins played the same important role in migration processes as in the life of the largest civilizations. In the era of the Migration of Peoples, the direction of movement of a significant majority of the tribes that form the Alano-Sarmatian ethnic space was determined not only by the presence of a center of civilization in this area, but also by the availability of water resources. Often these two factors coincided. Tanais certainly played the same role in the history of Eastern Europe as the Rhine for Western Europe or Istria for South-Eastern Europe. Around Meotida, the Iranian-speaking tribal world was concentrated and consolidated, as well as, for example, the Greek around the Aegean Sea or the Italo-Ligurian in the Western Mediterranean.
In the era of the Great Migration of peoples, various Turkic tribes were concentrated in the vast expanses of the Great Belt of the Steppes, stretching from Pannonia to Transbaikalia. They created a special ethnic space. The territories over which control of one or another nomadic community was established and with which these nomads identified themselves, represented a kind of nomadic nomadic area. Unlike other barbarian worlds, the border of this area was not the border of the Turkic ethnic space. This border was the circle of people that made up this nomadic community, belonging to which was determined by the polished norms of kinship. The Turkic barbarian world is a scattered spatial structure. The Eurasian steppe corridor is only one of the most important intercontinental arteries, along which migrations of various Hunnic tribes, and later Avars and Bulgars, went to Europe. In the era of the Great Migration of Nations, there was an idea that waves of nomads hostile to the Roman civilization were splashed out by Meotida and Tanais. Ideas about the invasion of "barbarians" from the east prevailed until the Renaissance. The nomads of the Turkic ethnic space in the era of the Great Migration have mastered various means of adaptation to the settled agricultural tribal worlds encountered on their way: periodic raids, regular robberies, imposed "vassalage", tributary.
Among the Turkic tribes, an idea was formed about the greater prestige of military predatory campaigns and conquests, in comparison with peaceful labor. This left an imprint on the life of these barbarian nomads, served as the basis for the formation of cults of war, a warrior-horseman, heroized ancestors in them. In the era of the Great Nations Migration, the advantage of the barbarian nomads was largely determined by the presence of riding animals, which at that time had a particularly important military-strategic importance.
To implement the expansion, "tribal" confederations and chiefdoms were created. Expansion directed against a large civilization, in this case Byzantine, created new means of adaptation - a nomadic "empire". Europe experienced the devastating effect of the steppe nomadic "empires" for several centuries.
The growing intensity of the "nomadic march" of Turkic migrations to the west, conventionally defined as "migration of migrations", was largely "bogged down" due to Slavic migrations.
The Slavic ethnic space of the era of the Great Migration of Peoples was formed under the influence of various factors. This vast tribal world, like the others, was not an isolated part of the Barbaricum. The Slavs of this time were distinguished by a special intensity of interethnic contacts. There were clashes between tribes and their peaceful neighborhood, including with the Balts, Sarmatians, Germans, Thracians, Illyrians, with some Turkic tribes. Over time, the Slavic tribes changed, mixing with other peoples, perceiving their culture, but without losing their ethnicity. Having passed through the Great Migration of Peoples, the Slavic tribes divided, united, creating numerous tribal formations with new names.
A distinctive feature of the Slavic tribal space is its relative distance from the Roman world. Being on the periphery of the Barbaricum, the Slavic tribes nevertheless actively participated in the migration processes. It can be assumed that the migration processes among the Slavic tribes were a kind of adaptation to the previous migrations of other tribes and their results. Approaching the borders of Roman civilization, the Slavic tribes did not at first strive, however, for interaction and extensive contacts with this world. The subsequent activity of the Slavs in relation to the empire was largely provoked by the empire itself, as well as the emergence of the Avar tribes. Slavic tribes, starting their advance southward and completing their settlement across the Balkan Peninsula in the 6th-7th centuries, merged with the Thracians, Illyrians and Celts. They dissolved the Türkic-speaking Bulgars in their midst, entered into contacts with the Epiroths, the Greeks, and laid the foundation for the South Slavic ethnic groups.
The ethnic space of the Great Nations Migration consists of two interrelated components. The first is the tribes and peoples who were real participants in the historical events of the Migration era. The second component is a system of ideas about these tribes, which was created both by the ancient and early medieval written tradition, and by modern national historiography. Sometimes these components collide. The ethnonym was a key element in the system of representations. In the era of the Migration of Nations, it served as a kind of universal "language of communication" between the barbarian world and Roman civilization. He served as a kind of "password", a regulator of interethnic ties.
And, finally, what are the reasons for the phenomenon called the Great Nations Migration? Qualitative changes in the economic life of the Germanic and Slavic tribes on the eve of the Great Migration led to an increase in social wealth and a large number of people not engaged in productive labor. The tribal elite felt the need to accumulate wealth, the means of obtaining which were campaigns in the Empire. These campaigns paved the way for subsequent migrations to the lands of the Roman state. At the same time, the Roman Empire played an active role, often stimulating the barbarians to migrate. The appearance of the Huns in Central Europe sharply accelerated the migration processes. The reasons for their resettlement are somewhat different from those of the sedentary peoples. To a greater extent, they are associated with natural factors, the influence of which on nomadic societies is stronger than on agricultural ones. The "nomadic factor", combined with the factor of socio-economic shifts in Germanic and Slavic societies, with the factor of the crisis of the Roman Empire, gave impetus to the launch of an almost non-stop migration process in the vastness of Europe in the II-VII centuries
9)
The barbarian tribes of Eastern Europe - the Slavs - did not experience the same influence of ancient civilization as the Germans.
The economic, social and political development of all Slavic tribes was distinguished by independence.
In Eastern Europe, at the beginning of the Middle Ages, tribal unions of the Balto-Slavs, Finno-Ugrians and Germans coexisted. In the south, in the steppe Black Sea region, in the process of the Great Migration of peoples, tribal unions of the Huns, Avars, Pechenegs, Polovtsians replaced each other. From the VI-VII centuries. the Slavs were also involved in this process. Their resettlement took place in three directions - to the south, to the Balkan Peninsula; to the east, within the East European Plain to the river. Volga; to the west, in the interfluve of the Odra (Oder) and Laba (Elbe) rivers, as well as in the Danube river basin. In the course of settling among the Slavs, as well as among the Germans in the 5th-6th centuries, the tribal system decomposed. A layer of vigilantes emerged, military power was concentrated in the hands of the leaders - princes.
In the early Middle Ages, Slavic tribal unions often found themselves in the zone of influence of state associations of nomads - Huns, Avars. Often, the Slavs acted as their allies, whom the nomads called "antas". But the nomads did not have a serious impact on the formation of the statehood of the Slavs. Nomads began to exert a real impact on the historical development of the Slavic states not earlier than the 11th century.
The basis of the economy of the barbaric Slavs was agriculture, in the south - arable land, in the north - slash-and-burn. The basis of social organization was the neighborhood community (rope). The Slavs were pagan fire-worshipers; Christianity among them began to spread rather late, from the 9th century. Only the southern Slavs, who were strongly influenced by Byzantium, began to Christianize already in the 7th-8th centuries.
On the territory of the East European Plain by the VIII-IX centuries. there were twelve tribal associations corresponding to the barbarian kingdoms of Western Europe in the early Middle Ages. These were the associations of Polyans, Drevlyans, Volynians, Uliches, Tivertsy, Croats, Severians (Northerners), Radimichi, Vyatichi, Krivichi, Dregovichi, Novgorod Slovenes.
And the latest achievements.
1.3. Because tribal theory this is still something, then according to the laws my text should be preceded by the provisions of the previous orthodox theories about. Since I position tribal theory as part of economic theory, it is important to note that all currently existing economic theories have generic insufficiency, since their foundations were formulated even "BEFORE" the appearance of Darwin's theory, which makes them theories not about people or, more precisely, not about representatives of a specific biological species of primates Homo sapiens, who arose in the course of anthropogenesis, but about some imaginary subjects to whom economists attributed the necessary, but in fact - fantastic properties.
1.4. The second feature of orthodox anthropology can be considered the division into two directions, which was a consequence of the division of economic theory into, as a successor of bourgeois political economy, and Marxist political economy, after the collapse of the USSR, almost forgotten by everyone, but at the same time, it had determining influence to all social sciences.
1.5. On the one hand, everyone is united by a FATAL IMPOSSIBILITY to resolve the issue of the origin and essence of society. One of the reasons for the nature of economic theories as an artificial construction of a theory for invented creatures, and not real people, is well stated in the article The Theory of Tribes (by Oleg Basin):
1.6. Tribes... For modern society, this may sound paradoxical. But, nevertheless, one should remember the origin of man and think about the origin of society, which even Marxist philosophy, i.e. dialectical materialism was too tough perhaps due to a lack of familiarity with Darwin's teaching, which, if it had arisen a little earlier, would certainly have found a response in Marx and Engels. Yes, if it had arisen even a little earlier, the modeling of society by Marx and Engels would have undergone a fatal and catastrophic transformation of their thoughts about the origin of man and his society. Although, as rational philosophers, they themselves could delve into this issue with their philosophical mind, because the idea of the origin of human society from an animal flock lies on the surface. Further, everyone was madly carried away by inventing a society without relying on the laws of nature, because the era of the policy of ambitious upstarts began, i.e. democracy; and there was no time to stop, and to think reasonably. Otherwise, how else can one explain the strange concealment of the question, which is in plain sight? More precisely, not the question itself, but a clear and simple answer to it.
1.7. The thesis that economists of all stripes have avoided and are avoiding can be found in the work (and chapter) of the venerable scientist Yuri Semenov. The reason for the lack of understanding is that economists still do not want to admit the real facts that lie on the surface: - first it is a fact that naturally and historically THE TRIBE is a FLARK of people, and second which follows from the first - THE STRUCTURE OF THE STAI-Tribe is a HIERARCHY.
1.8. Tribes. Tribes and flocks of animals... The natural unity of man and animals, therefore, and natural unity of society with the flock, where both types of object are based on a group of social instincts that determine the order of relationships in animal herds and in human society. Natural unity. However, of course, there is a difference, but very small. The human brain is more capacious in terms of the number of simultaneous operations, in terms of the accumulation of information and the complexity of mental modeling based on imagination. It follows from this that the main social unit in man slightly larger and slightly more complex than a pack of animals. And this .
Rigid hierarchical structure of society
2.1. Actually, every person from childhood knows about the hierarchy in human society, but it so happened that over the past centuries, under the influence of the state and humanistic ideas, the topic of social hierarchy has been pushed into the sphere of criminology, which predetermined the fate of all humanists, not otherwise than utopians. And even today, sociologists in the mirror are afraid to see the animal, which each person remains.
2.2. It would seem that hierarchy should not have such a meaning in TRIBE theory, but the fact is that only hierarchical instinct is the reason why people generally live in communities. The advantages of the existence of people in the TRIBAL FLOPS is the presence redistribution systems of the total product, so that the very last member had a volume of consumption greater than if he himself lived in Nature alone.
2.3. The power of the LEADER-LEADER is also a consequence of the hierarchy, but only it allows the LEADER to force the members to do not the work that pleases the member of the tribe, but precisely the one that is needed to maintain the balance of production of vital goods on a given day for the entire composition of the STATION OF THE Tribe. Indeed, in the TRIBE of people there is no freedom to do what you want, as in the STAE of hominids, and each is built into the system of division of labor, so that, as a rule, it is involved in the production of only one product. However, each member will receive the entire set of vital products as their share in accordance with the principle of hierarchical consumption from the total aggregate product produced by the system of division of labor of the entire TRIBE. And it is clear that the more members, the greater the range of consumer products, and hence the higher the standard of living.
2.4. Why is there a tendency to increase the number of units of humanity? Due to the positive relationship between the volume of meat obtained by hunting and the number of hunters, the average TRIBE number has increased compared to the FLARK of primates. A sufficiently large number became a condition for the emergence of a system of division of labor, in which the LEADER acquires the functions of a managerial link, further deepening the division of labor. The leader, in order to have a variety of consumer products himself, forces the entire composition of the TRIBE to be divided daily into detachments of miners of certain types of raw materials, from which the required assortment of consumption will be produced already in the PARKING STATION. So the growth of the Tribe through the acts of the division of technological labor produced by the LEADER, as a manager, leads to an increase in the variety of consumer products, which is called economic progress. Just an increase in number is a condition for the growth of the system of division of labor of a unit of humanity, and the growth of the system leads to an increase in the volume and range of consumption, which in turn makes it possible for a larger number of people to live in the community. So, having once ridden the division of labor, people continue their evolution in our time.
2.5. Obviously, with an increase in the number of Tribes - someday never, but the free land for budding should have ended. In the most favorable regions, where the reproduction of people was more intensive - the Nile Valley, Mesopotamia, India, China and the Black Sea region (as the homeland of the Indo-Europeans on the shores around the formerly freshwater lake)), wars for land between the tribes begin, since an excess of people must be removed from the STANDING. because territorial natural-economic complexes can feed only a limited number of people.
2.6. People overcame this economic crisis (otherwise the Malthusian trap) due to the emergence of a NEW UNIT OF HUMANITY - or rather, a new Unstable system of division of labor, which became the MILITARY-POLITICAL UNION, since the shortage of manufactured products was made up by predatory campaigns. Each UNION OF Tribes acquired an ARMY as an economic agent that turns the PARKING PARKING, in which the gatherings are held, into the CAPITAL OF THE UNION. It is the needs of the ARMY that makes the TRIBES specialize, the supply of the ARMY was paid partly from the loot and the more the TRIBE supplied the allied ARMY and the more soldiers delegated, the more of the loot was redistributed back. The CAPITAL becomes the place where there is an exchange of goods between tribes within the UNION, softening the economic crisis, as the items of loot tend to be exchanged without affecting the systems of division of labor of each TRIBE. Warriors receive items from loot as a reward, which violates the ancient principle of hierarchical consumption. It is the objects of prey, as external to the existing system of division of labor, that become the first private property that can participate in EXCHANGE, since the exchange of these EXTERNAL objects does not affect the system of division of labor. It remains to find out only the reasons for the DEMAND for loot items? since they themselves do not contribute much for consumption, since they are just articles of consumption, produced only in the system of the division of labor another TRIBE. Where does DEMAND come from as a longing desire to have this item for personal use?
2.7. EVALUATION OF THE SUBJECT arises as a ratio - (1) the desire to own (DEMAND) and (2) the person's ability to pay (what he can offer in return to the owner). At the same time, the degree of lust (DEMAND) depends on the hierarchical pyramid of consumption in which the thirsty person is, since in a different hierarchy of consumption, the same item may not be valued in any way. Prestigious consumption begins with hierarchs who, in order to distinguish themselves from the mass of ordinary members, are forced to present demand for the most prestigious consumer goods, but the item that appears in the HIERARCH of the pyramid of consumption, in which a member with a rank lower than the LEADER is, immediately makes him desire to have this item. as a symbol of raising his status in this pyramid of consumption. And all low-status members view the acquisition as moving up the hierarchical ladder. This race for newer prestige items is ECONOMY DRIVER in people. People, as biological beings, could well be satisfied with the standard of living of prehuman hominids, but the hierarchical instinct pushes them to acquire new items - not so much for the sake of increasing convenience, as for the sake of ostentatious consumption. Frequent property appears - as an object of exchange only for the sake of raising the status of the acquirer. We must understand that to change and to own - people are driven by a hierarchical instinct.
3.1. Tribal period characterized by an increase in the number of people in the process of mastering the surface of the planet, until the emergence of demographic crises of overpopulation in certain regions of the world, which causes WAR BETWEEN Tribes, leading to the formation of TERRITORIAL POLITICAL MILITARY UNIONS, which are considered the next unit of humanity.
Periodization of ancient history
The first stage in the development of mankind - the primitive communal system - takes a huge period of time from the moment man was separated from the animal kingdom (about 3-5 million years ago) to the formation of class societies in various regions of the planet (about the 4th millennium BC. .). Its periodization is based on differences in material and technique of making tools of labor (archaeological periodization). In accordance with it, in the most ancient era, there are:
Stone Age (from the emergence of man to the 3rd millennium BC);
Bronze Age (from the end of the 4th to the beginning of the 1st millennium BC);
Iron Age (from the 1st millennium BC).
In turn, the Stone Age is subdivided into the Old Stone Age (Paleolithic), Middle Stone Age (Mesolithic), New Stone Age (Neolithic) and Copper Stone Age transitional to Bronze Age (Eneolithic).
A number of scientists subdivide the history of primitive society into five stages, each of which differs in the degree of development of the tools of labor, the materials from which they were made, the quality of housing, and the appropriate organization of the economy.
The first stage is defined as the prehistory of the economy of the immaterial culture: from the emergence of mankind to approximately 1 million years ago. This is the time when human adaptation to the environment was not much different from animal livelihood. Many scientists believe that East Africa is the ancestral home of man. It is here that the bones of the first people who lived more than 2 million years ago are found during excavations.
The second stage is a primitive appropriating economy about 1 million years ago - XI millennium BC. e., covers a significant part of the Stone Age - the Early and Middle Paleolithic.
The third stage is a developed appropriating economy. It is difficult to determine its chronological framework, since in a number of localities this period ended in the 20th millennium. e. (subtropics of Europe and Africa), in others (tropics) - continues to this day. It covers the late Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and in some areas - the entire Neolithic.
The fourth stage is the emergence of a producing economy. In the most economically developed regions of the earth - IX - VIII thousand BC. e. (late Mesolithic - early Neolithic).
The fifth stage is the era of the productive economy. For some areas of dry and humid subtropics - VIII - V millennium BC. e.
In addition to the production of tools, the material culture of ancient mankind is closely connected with the creation of dwellings.
The most interesting archaeological finds of the oldest dwellings date back to the Early Paleolithic. Remains of 21 seasonal camps have been found in France. In one of them, an oval stone fence was opened, which can be interpreted as the foundation of a light dwelling. Inside the dwelling there were hearths and places for making tools. In the cave of Le Lazaret (France), the remains of a shelter were discovered, the reconstruction of which involves the presence of supports, a roof of hide, internal partitions and two hearths in a large room. Beds are made of animal skins (fox, wolf, lynx) and algae. These findings date back to about 150 thousand years.
On the territory of the USSR, the remains of ground dwellings, belong to the early Paleolithic, were found near the village of Molodovo on the Dniester. They were an oval arrangement of specially selected large mammoth bones. Here, traces of 15 fires were found, located in different parts of the dwelling.
The primitive epoch of mankind is characterized by a low level of development of production forces, their slow improvement, collective appropriation of natural resources and production results (primarily exploited territory), equitable distribution, socio-economic equality, lack of private property, exploitation of man by man, classes, states.
Analysis of the development of primitive human society shows that this development was extremely uneven. The process of separating our distant ancestors from the world of great apes was very slow.
The general scheme of human evolution is as follows:
Australopithecus man;
Homo erectus (formerly hominids: Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus);
Human of a modern physical species (late hominids: Neanderthals and Upper Paleolithic people).
In practice, the appearance of the first australopithecines marked the birth of a material culture directly related to the production of tools. It was the latter that became for archaeologists a means of determining the main stages in the development of ancient mankind.
The rich and generous nature of that period did not help to accelerate this process; only with the advent of the harsh conditions of the ice age, with the intensification of the labor activity of primitive man in his difficult struggle for existence, new skills rapidly appear, tools are improved, new social forms are developed. The mastery of fire, collective hunting for large animals, adaptation to the conditions of a melted glacier, the invention of the onion, the transition from appropriating to a productive economy (cattle breeding and agriculture), the discovery of metal (copper, bronze, iron) and the creation of a complex tribal organization of society - these are the important stages , which mark the path of mankind in the conditions of the primitive communal system.
Paleolithic - mastery of fire
The early, middle and late stages of the Paleolithic are distinguished. In the Early Paleolithic, in turn, the Primary, Schelian and Acheulean eras are distinguished.
The oldest cultural monuments were found in caves: Le Lazare (dating back to about 150 thousand years ago), Lyalco, Nio, Fonde de Gom (France), Altamira (Spain). A large number of items of the Chellean culture (tools) were found in Africa, especially in the Upper Nile valley, in Ternifin (Algeria), etc. The most ancient remnants of human culture on the territory of the USSR (Caucasus, Ukraine) date back to the turn of the Shellian and Acheulean eras. By the Acheulean era, people settled more widely, penetrating into Central Asia, the Volga region.
On the eve of the great glaciation, man already knew how to hunt the largest animals: elephants, rhinos, deer, bison. In the Acheulean era, the settledness of hunters appears, living in one place for a long time. Complex hunting has long been an addition to simple gathering.
During this period, humanity was already sufficiently organized and equipped. Perhaps the most significant was the mastery of fire about 300-200 thousand years ago. It is not for nothing that many southern peoples (in those places where people settled then) have preserved legends about the hero who stole the heavenly fire. The myth of Prometheus, who brought people fire - lightning, reflects the largest technical victory of our very distant ancestors.
Some researchers attribute the Mousterian era to the Early Paleolithic, while others distinguish it as a special stage of the Middle Paleolithic. Mousterian Neanderthals lived both in caves and in dwellings specially made of mammoth bones - chums. At this time, a person had already learned how to produce fire by friction, and not only maintain it, ignited by lightning.
The basis of the economy was hunting for mammoths, bison, and deer. The hunters were armed with spears, flint points and clubs. The first artificial burials of the dead belong to this era, which testifies to the emergence of very complex ideological ideas.
It is believed that the birth of the generic organization of society can be attributed to the same time. Only by the ordering of gender relations, the emergence of exogamy (the prohibition of marriages within the same collective) can explain the fact that the physical appearance of the Neanderthal began to improve and after thousands of years, by the end of the Ice Age, he turned into a neoanthrope or Cro-Magnon - people of our modern type.
The Upper (Late) Paleolithic is known to us better than previous eras. Nature was still harsh, the ice age was still going on. But man was already armed enough to fight for existence. The economy was becoming complex: it was based on hunting for large animals, but the rudiments of fishing appeared, and the collection of edible fruits, grains, and roots was a serious help.
Stone products were divided into two groups: weapons and tools (spearheads, knives, skin scrapers, flint tools for processing bone and wood). Various projectiles (darts, serrated harpoons, special spear throwers) have become widespread, allowing them to hit the beast at a distance.
According to archaeologists, the main unit of the social structure of the Upper Paleolithic was a small tribal community, numbering about a hundred people, of which twenty were adult hunters who managed the family's economy. The small round dwellings, the remains of which have been found, may have been adapted for a coupled family.
Finds of burials with excellent weapons made of mammoth tusks and a large number of ornaments testify to the emergence of a cult of chiefs, clan or tribal elders.
In the Upper Paleolithic, people widely settled not only in Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, but also in Siberia. According to scientists, America was settled from Siberia at the end of the Paleolithic.
Upper Paleolithic art testifies to the high development of human intelligence of this era. In the caves of France and Spain, colorful images dating back to this time have been preserved. Such a cave was also discovered by Russian scientists in the Urals (Kapova Cave) with the image of a mammoth, rhino, and a horse. Paintings on the walls of caves and carvings on bones, made by artists of the Ice Age, give an idea of the animals they hunted. This was probably due to various magical rites, spells and dances of hunters in front of painted animals, which was supposed to ensure a successful hunt. Elements of such magical actions have survived even in modern Christianity: a prayer for rain with sprinkling water on fields is an ancient magical act dating back to primitiveness.
Of particular note is the cult of the bear, dating back to the Mousterian era and allowing us to speak of the birth of totemism. Bone figurines of women are often found at Paleolithic sites near hearths or dwellings. The women are very portly and mature. Obviously, the main idea of such figurines is fertility, vitality, the continuation of the human race, personified in a woman - the mistress of the house and hearth.
The abundance of female images found in the Upper Paleolithic sites of Eurasia allowed scientists to conclude that the cult of the female progenitor was generated by matriarchy. With very primitive gender relations, children knew only their mothers, but they did not always know their fathers. Women guarded the fire in the hearths, dwellings, children: women of the older generation could keep track of kinship and monitor the observance of exogamous prohibitions so that children were not born from close relatives, the undesirability of which was obviously already realized. The prohibition of incest gave its results - the descendants of the former Neanderthals became healthier and gradually turned into people of the modern type.
Mesolithic - the resettlement of mankind from south to north
About ten millennia BC, a huge glacier, reaching 1000-2000 meters in height, began to melt intensively, the remnants of this glacier have survived to this day in the Alps and on the Scandinavian mountains. The transitional period from the glacier to the modern climate is called by the conventional term Mesolithic, that is, the Middle Stone Age - the interval between the Paleolithic and Neolithic, which takes about three to four millennia.
The Mesolithic is clear evidence of the strong influence of the geographic environment on the life and evolution of mankind. Nature has changed in many respects: the climate has warmed, the glacier has melted, deep rivers flowed to the south, large expanses of land previously covered by the glacier were gradually freed, vegetation was renewed and developed, mammoths and rhinos disappeared.
In connection with all this, the stable, streamlined life of Paleolithic mammoth hunters was disrupted, and other forms of economy had to be created. Using wood, man created a bow with arrows. This significantly expanded the hunting object: along with deer, elk, horses, they began to hunt various small birds and animals. The great ease of such hunting and the ubiquity of game made the strong communal collectives of mammoth hunters unnecessary. Mesolithic hunters and fishermen wandered in small groups through the steppes and forests, leaving behind them temporary campsites.
The warmer climate made it possible to revive gathering. Gathering of wild cereals turned out to be especially important for the future, for which wooden and bone sickles with flint blades were even invented. An innovation was the ability to create cutting and stabbing tools with a large number of sharp pieces of flint inserted into the edge of a wooden object.
Probably at this time people got acquainted with movement on water on logs and rafts, and with the properties of flexible rods and fibrous bark of trees.
The domestication of animals began: the hunter-archer followed the game with the dog; killing wild boars, people left broods of piglets for feeding.
Mesolithic - the time of the resettlement of mankind from south to north. Moving through the forests along the rivers, the Mesolithic man passed all the space freed from the glacier and reached the then northern edge of the Eurasian continent, where he began to hunt sea animals.
The art of the Mesolithic is significantly different from the Paleolithic: there was a weakening of the leveling communal principle and the role of an individual hunter increased - in the rock carvings we see not only animals, but also hunters, men with bows and women, awaiting their return.
Neolithic revolution
Neolithic - the transition to a manufacturing economy. This conventional name is applied to the last stage of the Stone Age, but it does not reflect either chronological or cultural uniformity: in the 11th century AD. e. Novgorodians wrote about exchange trade with the Neolithic (by type of economy) tribes of the North, and in the 18th century. The Russian scientist S. Krasheninnikov described the typical Neolithic life of the local residents of Kamchatka.
Nevertheless, the period VII-V millennium BC is attributed to the Neolithic. e. Having settled in different landscape zones, humanity has gone in different ways and at different rates. The tribes that found themselves in the North, in harsh conditions, remained at the same level of development for a long time. But in the southern regions, the evolution was faster.
A man had already used polished and drilled tools with handles, a loom, he knew how to sculpt utensils from clay, work wood, build a boat, weave a net. The potter's wheel, which appeared in the 4th millennium BC. e., sharply increased labor productivity and improved the quality of pottery. In the IV millennium BC. e. in the East, the wheel was invented, the traction power of animals began to be used, the first wheeled carts appeared.
Neolithic art is represented by petroglyphs (drawings on stones) in the regions of the North, revealing in all details skiers on elk, hunting in large boats for a whale.
One of the most important technical revolutions of antiquity is associated with the Neolithic era - the transition to a manufacturing economy (Neolithic revolution). In the Neolithic era, the first social division of labor into agricultural and cattle breeding took place, which contributed to the progress in the development of productive forces, and the second social division of labor - the separation of handicrafts from agriculture, which contributed to the individualization of labor.
Farming was spread very unevenly. The first centers of agriculture were found in Palestine, Egypt, Iran, Iraq. In Central Asia, artificial irrigation of fields using canals appeared already in the 4th millennium BC. e. Agricultural tribes are characterized by large settlements of adobe houses, sometimes numbering several thousand inhabitants. The Dzheitun archaeological culture in Central Asia and the Bug-Dniester culture in the Ukraine represent early agricultural cultures in the 5th - 4th millennia BC. e.
Eneolithic - agricultural society
The Eneolithic - the copper-stone age, during this period, individual products made of pure copper appeared, but the new material has not yet affected the forms of the economy. The Trypillian culture (VI - III millennium BC) belongs to the Eneolithic era, located between the Carpathians and the Dnieper on fertile loess and chernozem soils. During this period, the primitive agricultural society reached its peak.
Trypillians (like other early farmers) developed the type of complex economy that existed in the countryside until the era of capitalism: agriculture (wheat, barley, flax), cattle breeding (cow, pig, sheep, goat), fishing and hunting. Primitive matriarchal communities, apparently, did not yet know property and social inequality.
Of particular interest is the ideology of the Trypillian tribes, permeated with the idea of fertility, which was expressed in the identification of land and women: the land giving birth to a new ear of grain from a seed was, as it were, equated with a woman giving birth to a new person. This idea underlies many religions, right up to Christianity.
Clay figurines of women associated with the matriarchal cult of fertility are attributed to the Trypillian culture. The painting of large clay vessels of the Trypillian culture reveals the worldview of the farmers who took care of irrigating their fields with rain, the picture of the world they created. The world, according to their ideas, consisted of three zones (tiers): the zone of the earth with plants, the zone of the Middle Sky with the sun and rains, and the zone of the Upper Sky, which stores above the reserves of heavenly water, which can be spilled during rain. The supreme ruler of the world was a female deity. The picture of the world of Trypillians is very close to that reflected in the most ancient hymns of the Indian Rig Veda (a collection of religious hymns of ideological and cosmological content, took shape in the 10th century BC).
Human evolution accelerated especially with the discovery of metal - copper and bronze (an alloy of copper and tin). Tools of labor, weapons, armor, jewelry and utensils from the 3rd millennium BC e. began to be made not only from stone, but also from bronze. The exchange between the tribes of products and products intensified, and clashes between them became more frequent. The division of labor deepened, property inequality within the clan appeared.
In connection with the development of cattle breeding, the role of men in production has increased. The era of patriarchy has come. Within the clan, large patriarchal families arose, with a man at the head, leading an independent household. It was then that polygamy appeared.
In the Bronze Age, large cultural communities were already outlined, which, perhaps, corresponded to language families: Indo-Europeans, Ugro-Finns, Turks and Caucasian tribes.
Their geographical location was very different from the modern one. The ancestors of the Ugro - Finns moved, according to some scientists, from the Aral Sea region to the north and north - west, passing west of the Urals. The ancestors of the Turkic peoples were located east of Lake Baikal and Altai.
In all likelihood, the main ancestral home of the Slavs was the area between the Dnieper, the Carpathians and the Vistula, but at different times the ancestral home could have different outlines - it could expand at the expense of Central European cultures, then move to the east, or sometimes go out to the steppe south.
Neighbors of the Proto-Slavs were the ancestors of the Germanic tribes in the northwest, the ancestors of the Latvian-Lithuanian (Baltic) tribes in the north, the Dacian-Thracian tribes in the southwest and the Proto-Iranian (Scythian) tribes in the south and southeast; from time to time the Proto-Slavs came into contact with the northeastern Finno-Ugric tribes and, far in the west, with the Celtic-Italic.
Decomposition of the primitive communal system
Approximately in the 5th - 4th millennium BC. e. the decomposition of primitive society began. Among the factors contributing to this, in addition to the Neolithic revolution, an important role was played by the intensification of agriculture, the development of specialized cattle breeding, the emergence of metallurgy, the formation of a specialized craft, and the development of trade.
With the development of plow farming, agricultural labor passed from female hands to male hands, and a man - a farmer and a warrior - became the head of the family. The accumulation in different families was not the same, and each family, accumulating property, tried to preserve it in the family. The product gradually ceases to be divided among the members of the community, and property begins to pass from father to children, the foundations of private ownership of the means of production are laid.
From the account of kinship on the maternal line, they move to the account of kinship on the father - patriarchy is formed. The form of family relations is changing accordingly; there is a patriarchal family based on private property. The subordination of women is reflected, in particular, in the fact that monogamy is mandatory only for women, while polygamy (polygamy) is allowed for men. The most ancient documents of Egypt and Mesopotamia testify to this situation, which developed by the end of the 4th - beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. e. The same picture is confirmed by the most ancient monuments of writing appearing among some tribes in the foothills of Asia Minor and China in the 2nd millennium BC. e.
The growth of labor productivity, increased exchange, constant wars - all this led to the emergence of property stratification among the tribes. Inequality of property also gave rise to social inequality. The top of the clan aristocracy was formed, in fact, in charge of all affairs. Noble members of the community sat in the tribal council, were in charge of the cult of the gods, singled out military leaders and priests from their midst. Along with property and social differentiation within the clan community, differentiation within the tribe between individual clans also occurs. On the one hand, strong and rich genera stand out, and on the other, weakened and impoverished ones. Accordingly, the first of them gradually turn into dominant, and the second - into subordinates. As a result, whole tribes or even groups of tribes could be in the blue.
However, for a long time, despite the property and social stratification of the community, the top of the clan nobility still had to reckon with the opinion of the entire community. But more and more often the labor of the collective is being abused in its own interests by the clan elite, with the power of which ordinary members of the community can no longer argue.
So, the signs of the disintegration of the clan system were the emergence of property inequality, the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the leaders of the tribes, the increase in armed clashes, the conversion of prisoners into slaves, the transformation of the clan from a consanguineous collective into a territorial community. Archaeological excavations in different parts of the world, including on the territory of our country, allow us to draw such conclusions. An example is the famous Maikop kurgan in the North Caucasus, dating back to the 2nd millennium BC. e., or the magnificent burials of the leaders in Trialeti (south of Tbilisi). The abundance of treasures, burials with the leader of forcibly killed slaves and slaves, the colossal size of the grave mounds - all this testifies to the wealth and power of the leaders, to the violation of the initial equality within the tribe.
In different parts of the world, the destruction of primitive communal relations took place at different times, the models of the transition to higher-standing formations were also diverse: some peoples formed early class states, others - slaveholding, many peoples bypassed the slave system and went directly to feudalism, and some to colonial capitalism (the peoples of America , Australia).
Although defensive aggressiveness and brutality are not usually the cause of war, these traits are still expressed in the way the war is waged. Therefore, data on the conduct of wars by primitive peoples help to supplement our understanding of the essence of primitive aggressiveness.
We find a detailed account of the Walbury war in Australia in Meggith; Service believes that this description represents a very apt description of primitive wars among hunting tribes.
The Walbiri tribe was not particularly militant - it did not have a military estate, there was no professional army, no hierarchical command system; and there were very few campaigns of conquest. Every man was (and remains) a potential warrior: he is constantly armed and always ready to defend his rights; but at the same time, each of them was an individualist and preferred to fight alone, independently of the others. In some clashes, it happened that family ties put men in the ranks of the enemy camp, and all the men of a certain community could accidentally belong to one of such groups. But there were no military commanders, elected or inherited positions, no headquarters, plans, strategies or tactics. And even if there were men who distinguished themselves in battle, they received respect and attention, but not the right to command others. But there were circumstances when the battle developed so rapidly that men entered the battle accurately and without delay, using precisely those methods that led to victory. This rule still applies to all young unmarried men today.
In any case, there was no reason for one tribe to be forced to engage in a massive war against others. These tribes did not know what slavery was, what movable or immovable property was; the conquest of a new territory was only a burden for the winner, for all the spiritual bonds of the tribe were associated with a certain territory. If there were occasional small wars of conquest with other tribes, then, I am sure, they differed only in scale from conflicts within a tribe or even a clan. So, for example, in the battle of Waringari, which led to the conquest of the Tanami reservoir, only men from the Wanaiga tribe took part, and, moreover, no more than twenty people. And in general, I do not know of a single case of the conclusion of military alliances between tribes for the purpose of attacking other Valbirian communities or other tribes.
From a technical point of view, this kind of conflict between primitive hunters can be called "war". And in this sense, we can come to the conclusion that man from time immemorial has been waging wars within his own species and therefore an innate craving for murder has developed in him. But such a conclusion overlooks the deepest differences in the conduct of wars by primitive communities of different levels of development and completely ignores the difference between these wars from the wars of civilized peoples. In low-level primitive cultures, there was no centralized organization or permanent commanders. Wars were rare, and wars of conquest were out of the question. They did not lead to bloodshed and did not have the goal of killing as many enemies as possible.
The wars of civilized peoples, on the contrary, have a clear institutional structure, constant command, and their goals are always aggressive: either it is the conquest of territory, or slaves, or profit. In addition, one more, perhaps the most important, difference is overlooked: for primitive hunters and gatherers, the escalation of the warrior has no economic benefit.
The growth of the population of hunting tribes is so insignificant that the factor of population can very rarely be the cause of a war of conquest of one community against another. And even if this happened, then, most likely, it would not lead to a real battle. Most likely, the matter would have gone even without a struggle: just a more numerous and stronger community would have made their claims to "foreign territory", actually starting to hunt or gather fruits there. And besides that, what is the profit from the hunting tribe, there is nothing to take. He has few material values, there is no standard exchange unit, from which capital is composed. Finally, such a widespread reason for wars in modern times as the enslavement of prisoners of war, at the stage of primitive hunters, did not make any sense because of the low level of production. They simply would not have enough strength and resources to maintain prisoners of war and slaves.
The general picture of primitive wars drawn by Service is confirmed and supplemented by many researchers, whom I will try to cite further. Pilbeam stresses that these were clashes, but not wars. He further points out that in hunting communities, example played a more important role than strength and power, that generosity, reciprocity and cooperation were the main principles of life.
Stewart draws some interesting insights into the conduct of war and the concept of territoriality:
There was a lot of discussion on the issue of ownership of the territory among primitive hunters (nomads): did they have permanent territories or sources of food, and if so, how they ensured the protection of this property. And although I cannot say unequivocally, I think that it was atypical for them. First, small groups within the larger communities of a tribe tend to cross-marry, intermix if they are too small, or split if they become too large. Secondly, primary small groups do not show a tendency to consolidate any special territories. Thirdly, when they talk about "war" in such communities, then most often it is nothing more than actions of revenge for witchcraft or something like that. Or they mean long-term family feuds. Fourthly, it is known that the main fishery in large areas consisted of harvesting fruits, but I do not know of a single case that someone has defended a territory with fruits from attack. Primary groups did not fight each other, and it is difficult to imagine how a tribe could call its men if it was necessary to jointly defend its territory, and what could be the reason for this. True, it is known that some members of the group took for individual use individual trees, eagle nests and other specific sources of food, but it remains completely unclear how these "objects" could be protected, being several miles apart.
N.N. Terni-Khai comes to similar conclusions. In a 1971 paper, he notes that although fear, anger and frustration are universal human experiences, the art of warfare developed at a later stage in human evolution. Most primitive communities were incapable of waging war, since they lacked the necessary level of categorical thinking. They did not have the kind of concept of organization that is absolutely necessary if someone wants to take over neighboring territory. Most wars between primitive tribes are not wars at all, but hand-to-hand combat. According to Rapoport, anthropologists greeted Terni-Khai's works without much enthusiasm, because he criticized all professional anthropologists for the lack of reliable first-hand information in their reports and called all their conclusions about primitive wars insufficient and amateurish. He himself preferred to rely on amateur studies of ethnologists of the past generation, for they contained reliable first-hand information.
Keynes Wright's monumental work contains 1,637 pages of text, including an extensive bibliography. Here, a deep analysis of primitive wars is given, based on a statistical comparison of data on 653 primitive peoples. The disadvantage of this work is its mainly descriptive and classification character. Yet its results provide statistics and show trends that are consistent with the findings of many other researchers. Namely: “Simple hunters, gatherers and farmers are the least warlike people. Hunters and peasants of a higher level show great belligerence, and the most high-ranking hunters and shepherds are the most aggressive people of all the ancients. "
This statement confirms the hypothesis that pugnaciousness is not an innate human trait, and therefore militancy can only be spoken of as a function of civilizational development. Wright's data clearly show that society becomes the more aggressive, the higher the division of labor in it, that the most aggressive are social systems in which there is already a division into classes. Finally, these data show that the more stable the equilibrium between different groups, as well as between the group and its environment, the less militancy in a society; the more often this balance is disturbed, the sooner the readiness to fight is formed.
Wright distinguishes between four types of wars: defensive, social, economic, and political. By defensive war, he understands the kind of behavior that is inevitable in the event of a real attack. The subject of such behavior may even be a people for whom war is completely uncharacteristic (not part of its tradition): in this case, people spontaneously "grab any weapon that comes along to protect themselves and their home, and at the same time consider this necessity as misfortune. "
Social wars are those in the course of which, as a rule, "not much blood is shed" (similar to the wars between hunters described by Service). Economic and political wars are waged by peoples interested in seizing land, raw materials, women and slaves, or for the sake of maintaining the power of a particular dynasty or class.
Almost everyone draws this conclusion: if civilized people show such belligerence, then how much more belligerent probably were primitive people. But Wright's results confirm the thesis about the minimal militancy of the most primitive peoples and about the growth of aggressiveness with the growth of civilization. If destructiveness were an innate quality of a person, then the opposite tendency should be observed.
Wright's opinion is shared by M. Ginsberg:
One gets the impression that the threat of war in this sense increases with economic development and consolidation of groups. Among primitive peoples, one can rather speak of clashes based on insults, personal offense, betrayal of a woman, etc. It should be recognized that these communities, in comparison with more developed primitive peoples, look very peaceful. But violence and fear of force do occur, and there are fights, albeit small ones. We do not have that much knowledge about this life, but the facts that we have at our disposal indicate, if not about the paradise idyll of primitive people, then, in any case, that aggressiveness is not an innate element of human nature.
Ruth Benedict divides wars into “socially lethal” and “non-lethal”. The latter are not intended to subjugate other tribes and exploit them (although they are accompanied by a long struggle, as was the case with different tribes of the North American Indians).
The idea of conquest never entered the minds of the North American Indians. This allowed the Indian tribes to do something extraordinary, namely to separate the war from the state. The state was personified in a certain peaceful leader - the spokesman for public opinion in his group. The peaceful leader had a permanent "residence", was a fairly important person, although he was not an authoritarian ruler. However, he had nothing to do with the war. He did not even appoint foremen and was not interested in the behavior of the belligerents. Everyone who could muster a squad, took a position where and when he pleased, and often became the commander for the entire period of the war. But as soon as the war ended, he lost all power. And the state was not in any way interested in these campaigns, which turned into a demonstration of unbridled individualism directed against the outer tribes, but without causing any damage to the political system.
Ruth Benedict's arguments concern the relationship between state, war and private property. Social war of the "non-lethal" type is an expression of adventurism, a desire to show off, to win trophies, but without any goal of enslaving another people or destroying its vital resources. Ruth Benedict concludes: “The absence of war is not so rare as the theorists of the prehistoric period portray it ... And it is completely absurd to attribute this chaos (war) to the biological needs of man. No, really. Chaos is the work of man himself. "
Another famous anthropologist, E. A. Hable, characterizing the wars of the earliest North American tribes, writes: “These clashes are more like the 'moral equivalent of war,' as William James puts it. We are talking about a harmless reflection of any aggression: here there is movement, sport, and pleasure (but not destruction); and the requirements for the enemy never go beyond reasonable boundaries. " Hable comes to the same conclusion that a person's propensity for war can by no means be considered instinctive, for in the event of war we are talking about a phenomenon of a highly developed culture. And as an illustration, he cites the example of the peace-loving Shoshone and the quarrelsome Comanches, who as far back as 1600 did not represent either a national or a cultural community.
War among primitive peoples
Although defensive aggressiveness and brutality are not usually the cause of war, these traits are still expressed in the way the war is waged. Therefore, data on the conduct of wars by primitive peoples help to supplement our understanding of the essence of primitive aggressiveness.
We find a detailed account of the Walbury war in Australia in Meggith; Service believes that this description represents a very apt description of primitive wars among hunting tribes.
The Walbiri tribe was not particularly militant - it did not have a military estate, there was no professional army, no hierarchical command system; and there were very few campaigns of conquest. Every man was (and remains) a potential warrior: he is constantly armed and always ready to defend his rights; but at the same time, each of them was an individualist and preferred to fight alone, independently of the others. In some clashes, it happened that family ties put men in the ranks of the enemy camp, and all the men of a certain community could accidentally belong to one of such groups. But there were no military commanders, elected or inherited positions, no headquarters, plans, strategies or tactics. And even if there were men who distinguished themselves in battle, they received respect and attention, but not the right to command others. But there were circumstances when the battle developed so rapidly that men entered the battle accurately and without delay, using precisely those methods that led to victory. This rule still applies to all young unmarried men today.
In any case, there was no reason for one tribe to be forced to engage in a massive war against others. These tribes did not know what slavery was, what movable or immovable property was; the conquest of a new territory was only a burden for the winner, for all the spiritual bonds of the tribe were associated with a certain territory. If there were occasional small wars of conquest with other tribes, then, I am sure, they differed only in scale from conflicts within a tribe or even a clan. So, for example, in the battle of Waringari, which led to the conquest of the Tanami reservoir, only men from the Wanaiga tribe took part, and, moreover, no more than twenty people. And in general, I do not know of a single case of the conclusion of military alliances between tribes for the purpose of attacking other Valbirian communities or other tribes.
From a technical point of view, this kind of conflict between primitive hunters can be called "war". And in this sense, we can come to the conclusion that man from time immemorial has been waging wars within his own species and therefore an innate craving for murder has developed in him. But such a conclusion overlooks the deepest differences in the conduct of wars by primitive communities of different levels of development and completely ignores the difference between these wars from the wars of civilized peoples. In low-level primitive cultures, there was no centralized organization or permanent commanders. Wars were rare, and wars of conquest were out of the question. They did not lead to bloodshed and did not have the goal of killing as many enemies as possible.
The wars of civilized peoples, on the contrary, have a clear institutional structure, constant command, and their goals are always aggressive: either it is the conquest of territory, or slaves, or profit. In addition, one more, perhaps the most important, difference is overlooked: for primitive hunters and gatherers, the escalation of the warrior has no economic benefit.
The growth of the population of hunting tribes is so insignificant that the factor of population can very rarely be the cause of a war of conquest of one community against another. And even if this happened, then, most likely, it would not lead to a real battle. Most likely, the matter would have gone even without a struggle: just a more numerous and stronger community would have made their claims to "foreign territory", actually starting to hunt or gather fruits there. And besides that, what is the profit from the hunting tribe, there is nothing to take. He has few material values, there is no standard exchange unit, from which capital is composed. Finally, such a widespread reason for wars in modern times as the enslavement of prisoners of war, at the stage of primitive hunters, did not make any sense because of the low level of production. They simply would not have enough strength and resources to maintain prisoners of war and slaves.
The general picture of primitive wars drawn by Service is confirmed and supplemented by many researchers, whom I will try to cite further. Pilbeam stresses that these were clashes, but not wars. He further points out that in hunting communities, example played a more important role than strength and power, that generosity, reciprocity and cooperation were the main principles of life.
Stewart draws some interesting insights into the conduct of war and the concept of territoriality:
There was a lot of discussion on the issue of ownership of the territory among primitive hunters (nomads): did they have permanent territories or sources of food, and if so, how they ensured the protection of this property. And although I cannot say unequivocally, I think that it was atypical for them. First, small groups within the larger communities of a tribe tend to cross-marry, intermix if they are too small, or split if they become too large. Secondly, primary small groups do not show a tendency to consolidate any special territories. Thirdly, when they talk about "war" in such communities, then most often it is nothing more than actions of revenge for witchcraft or something like that. Or they mean long-term family feuds. Fourthly, it is known that the main fishery in large areas consisted of harvesting fruits, but I do not know of a single case that someone has defended a territory with fruits from attack. Primary groups did not fight each other, and it is difficult to imagine how a tribe could call its men if it was necessary to jointly defend its territory, and what could be the reason for this. True, it is known that some members of the group took for individual use individual trees, eagle nests and other specific sources of food, but it remains completely unclear how these "objects" could be protected, being several miles apart.
N.N. comes to similar conclusions. Terney Hai. In a 1971 paper, he notes that although fear, anger and frustration are universal human experiences, the art of warfare developed at a later stage in human evolution. Most primitive communities were incapable of waging war, since they lacked the necessary level of categorical thinking. They did not have the kind of concept of organization that is absolutely necessary if someone wants to take over neighboring territory. Most wars between primitive tribes are not wars at all, but hand-to-hand combat. According to Rapoport, anthropologists greeted Terni-Khai's works without much enthusiasm, because he criticized all professional anthropologists for the lack of reliable first-hand information in their reports and called all their conclusions about primitive wars insufficient and amateurish. He himself preferred to rely on amateur studies of ethnologists of the past generation, for they contained reliable first-hand information.
Keynes Wright's monumental work contains 1,637 pages of text, including an extensive bibliography. Here, a deep analysis of primitive wars is given, based on a statistical comparison of data on 653 primitive peoples. The disadvantage of this work is its mainly descriptive and classification character. Yet its results provide statistics and show trends that are consistent with the findings of many other researchers. Namely: “Simple hunters, gatherers and farmers are the least warlike people. Hunters and peasants of a higher level show great belligerence, and the most high-ranking hunters and shepherds are the most aggressive people of all the ancients. "
This statement confirms the hypothesis that pugnaciousness is not an innate human trait, and therefore militancy can only be spoken of as a function of civilizational development. Wright's data clearly show that society becomes the more aggressive, the higher the division of labor in it, that the most aggressive are social systems in which there is already a division into classes. Finally, these data show that the more stable the equilibrium between different groups, as well as between the group and its environment, the less militancy in a society; the more often this balance is disturbed, the sooner the readiness to fight is formed.
Wright distinguishes between four types of wars: defensive, social, economic, and political. By defensive war, he understands the kind of behavior that is inevitable in the event of a real attack. The subject of such behavior may even be a people for whom war is completely uncharacteristic (not part of its tradition): in this case, people spontaneously "grab any weapon that comes along to protect themselves and their home, and at the same time consider this necessity as misfortune. "
Social wars are those in the course of which, as a rule, "not much blood is shed" (similar to the wars between hunters described by Service). Economic and political wars are waged by peoples interested in seizing land, raw materials, women and slaves, or for the sake of maintaining the power of a particular dynasty or class.
Almost everyone draws this conclusion: if civilized people show such belligerence, then how much more belligerent probably were primitive people. But Wright's results confirm the thesis about the minimal militancy of the most primitive peoples and about the growth of aggressiveness with the growth of civilization. If destructiveness were an innate quality of a person, then the opposite tendency should be observed.
Wright's opinion is shared by M. Ginsberg:
One gets the impression that the threat of war in this sense increases with economic development and consolidation of groups. Among primitive peoples, one can rather talk about clashes based on insults, personal resentment, betrayal of a woman, etc. It should be admitted that these communities, in comparison with the more developed primitive peoples, look very peaceful. But violence and fear of force do occur, and there are fights, albeit small ones. We do not have that much knowledge about this life, but the facts that we have at our disposal indicate, if not about the paradise idyll of primitive people, then, in any case, that aggressiveness is not an innate element of human nature.
Ruth Benedict divides wars into “socially lethal” and “non-lethal”. The latter are not intended to subjugate other tribes and exploit them (although they are accompanied by a long struggle, as was the case with different tribes of the North American Indians).
The idea of conquest never entered the minds of the North American Indians. This allowed the Indian tribes to do something extraordinary, namely to separate the war from the state. The state was personified in a certain peaceful leader - the spokesman for public opinion in his group. The peaceful leader had a permanent "residence", was a fairly important person, although he was not an authoritarian ruler. However, he had nothing to do with the war. He did not even appoint foremen and was not interested in the behavior of the belligerents. Everyone who could muster a squad, took a position where and when he pleased, and often became the commander for the entire period of the war. But as soon as the war ended, he lost all power. And the state was not in any way interested in these campaigns, which turned into a demonstration of unbridled individualism directed against the outer tribes, but without causing any damage to the political system.
Ruth Benedict's arguments concern the relationship between state, war and private property. Social war of the "non-lethal" type is an expression of adventurism, a desire to show off, to win trophies, but without any goal of enslaving another people or destroying its vital resources. Ruth Benedict concludes: “The absence of war is not so rare as the theorists of the prehistoric period portray it ... And it is completely absurd to attribute this chaos (war) to the biological needs of man. No, really. Chaos is the work of man himself. "
Another famous anthropologist, E.A. Hable, describing the wars of the earliest North American tribes, writes: “These clashes are more like the 'moral equivalent of war,' as William James puts it. We are talking about a harmless reflection of any aggression: here there is movement, sport, and pleasure (but not destruction); and the requirements for the enemy never go beyond reasonable boundaries. " Hable comes to the same conclusion that a person's propensity for war can by no means be considered instinctive, for in the event of war we are talking about a phenomenon of a highly developed culture. And as an illustration, he cites the example of the peace-loving Shoshone and the quarrelsome Comanches, who as far back as 1600 did not represent either a national or a cultural community.
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From the book Metaphysics of War by Evola JuliusAnalysis of Thirty Primitive Tribes In terms of aggressiveness (or peacefulness), I studied thirty primitive cultures. Three of them were described by Ruth Benedict in 1934, thirteen were studied by Margaret Mead, fifteen by George Murdock and one -
From the book The Lifestyle We Choose the author Förster Friedrich Wilhelm"Patriotic War of the Peoples of Abkhazia" and Mountain Volunteers This is how the armed conflict with the Georgian side, which lasted from August 1992 to September 1993, is officially called in Abkhazia. Public references to mountain volunteers, however, have already become problematic
From the book Degeneration. Modern French. author Nordau MaxTHE GREAT WAR AND THE SMALL WAR Let our readers not find it strange that having considered the complex of Western traditions associated with holy war - that is, war as a spiritual value - we now propose to explore the same aspect expressed in the Islamic tradition.
From the book Spiritual Treasures. Philosophical essays and essays the author Roerich Nicholas Konstantinovich11. About the mutual complementarity of peoples and races What Plato calls "heavenly love" and "the yearning of poverty for wealth", that is, the need to complement everything one-sided, the striving of our spiritual nature to the universal, universal
From the book of 12 leading modern philosophers by Camp Gary"The death of peoples" The general character of numerous phenomena of our time, as well as the basic mood expressed in them, is now usually called the mood of the "end of the century" (fin de si? Cle). It is already known from experience that the designation of a concept in most cases
From the author's bookSound of peoples
From the author's bookI. The Sound of Nations It has long been said that the soul of peoples sounds not only in the words themselves, but precisely in the sounds. This is the true sound that expresses the essence, for each sound is also a color, there is also the whole essence of Being. Comparative phonetics of adverbs will give excellent
From the author's bookII. The soul of the peoples In the foam of the ocean waves, every inexperienced sailor finds chaos and a formless heap, but the wise experience clearly distinguishes both the lawful rhythm and the solid pattern of the wave's growth. Isn't it the same in the foam of the confusion of the peoples? It would also be shortsighted not
From the author's bookRawls 'Peoples' Law believed from the outset that his theory of justice must remain valid for international relations (Justice as Honesty, 49). However, in The Theory of Justice, he very briefly outlines this topic, arguing that it will lead