The combination of government and religion has thus functioned together with
germs, writing and technology, as one of the four main sets of proximate agents
leading to history's broadest pattern.
Diamond opens us this chapter about governments and societies that have been present in world by the introduction of a secluded tribe in New Guinea named the Fayu. They lived similar to how most societies lived at the end of the last ice age, where most were hunter-gatherers, nomads and lacking political and social mechanisms.
The Fayu are actually an extreme in the range of societies present today, with modern America as the opposite extreme. Both groups differ by their "distinctions between rich and poor, and many other political, economic, and social institutions". Furthermore, the Fayu are classified as a Band, also known as the tiniest societies. Bands are the lowest and smallest of the types of societies present today and it is marked by 5 to 80 people, just like an extended family. Most secluded societies are bands, notably the African Pygmies, African Bushmen, Aborigines and the Eskimos. Obviously they do not have any formalized social class unlike ours and leadership is rare.
Next is the tribe, which is much larger than a band and consisting of hundreds of citizens rather than just under a hundred for bands. A key difference here is that tribes consist of fixed settlements instead of the nomadic bands. Tribes were first noticed around 13,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, where as we examined is the birthplace of writing and farming techniques. Thus the availability of farming assisted in obtaining resources in just one concentrated area. But there are similarities between the tribes and bands. Reading over, I guessed that tribes and bands both lacked a systematic government and social classes. I was right, but I missed 'police, taxes and specialists'.
The next two groups are chiefdoms and states. Simply put, chiefdoms were obviously larger than tribes and bands and consisted of a chief who was a permanent centralized authority. Furthermore, to support the chief, farming and agriculture was necessary and food surpluses were distributed among the specialized people who would work to create new technologies or necessities for the chiefdoms. The most notable economic feature of chiefdom is the shift from simple exchanges between A and B, where A gives B a gift and A expects something form B in the near future, to a system where redistribution from the chief to the commoners was present.
Redistribution
States are what we are most familiar with today. Those in Mesoamerica, China and West Africa in the past are all classified as states. They were marked with a king, who exercised an even greater power than a chief. Internal conflict has been well maintained from laws and police, which were uncommon in the types of societies described before. But most of all, states contained religion and common areas of worship.
As Diamond puts it, religion:
1) Brings people together by providing them with a bond not based on kinship
2) It gives people a motive to sacrifice their lives for others.
But I also believe religion can destroy societies and tear them apart. Just like conflicting ideals erupt in a fight, so do conflicting religions. Most notable are the crusades which decimated two states because of differing religious views and missionaries who tried to convert natives from their original beliefs.
So what created these states comparative to chiefdoms, tribes and bands? We go to philosopher Rousseau who "speculated that states are formed by social contract, a rational decision reached when people calculated their self-interest, came to the agreement that they would be better off in a state than in simpler societies" His philosophy
Another interesting theory is the necessity of a centralized figure/government who could maintain such large-scale irrigation systems that began to emerge in areas such as Mesoamerica, China and Mexico. Farming is a key to the success of societies and to unite the people from small chiefdoms into one large state to distribute the wealth, a government is necessary. Thus, food production not only assists in increasing population size (which is essential for states) but also makes the premises of complex societies possible. Why is it possible? Three facts:
1) Societies of thousands can exist only if they develop centralized authority to monopolize force and resolve conflicts
2) A large society must be structured and centralized if it is to reach decisions effectively
3) Goods in excess of an individual's needs must be transferred from the individual to a centralized authority, which then redistributes the goods.
Word Count: 772
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