Read Online The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond - Free Book Online
Authors: Jared Diamond
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had long ago made pots, suddenly “discovered” that the hitherto scorned clay in their area was perfectly good for making pots, and resumed making their own pots. Thus, it’s clear that the Mömariböwei-teri villagers had previously been importing pots from Möwaraöba-teri out of choice (to cement a political alliance), not out of necessity.
It’s even clearer that !Kung engage in extensive trade of arrows out of choice, because all !Kung make similar arrows, which they nevertheless trade back and forth between each other. Anthropologist Richard Lee asked four !Kung men to tell him who owned each of the 13 to 19 arrows in each of their quivers. Of the four men, only one (Kopela Maswe) had no arrows from other men. One man (/N!au) had 11 arrows from a total of four other men, and only two arrows of his own. The other two men (/Gaske and N!eishi) had no arrows of their own: instead, each was carrying the arrows of six other men.
What is the point of these conventional monopolies and of arrow-for-arrow trading, seemingly senseless to us Westerners accustomed to trading only for objects that we can’t readily provide for ourselves? Evidently, traditional trade has social and political as well as economic functions: not merely to obtain items for their own sake, but also to “create” trade for advancing social and political goals. Perhaps the foremost such goal is to strengthen an alliance or bond on which one can call if the need arises. Trade partners among the northwest Alaska Inuithad the obligation of supporting each other if necessary: should a famine arise in your district, you have the right to go to live with your trade partner in another district. Agta hunters “trading” among themselves or with Philippine farmers regard their exchanges as based on need rather than on supply and demand: it’s assumed that different partners are likely to have surpluses or needs at different times, and that it will balance out in the long run, so a strict accounting is not kept. Each side in an Agta exchange makes major sacrifices at a time of crisis for the partner, such as at the time of a wedding or funeral ceremony, a typhoon, or a crop or hunting failure. For the Yanomamo, embroiled in constant warfare, the alliances developed through trade’s regularly bringing neighbors together under friendly circumstances are far more important to survival than are the traded pots and hammocks—even though no Yanomamo would openly say that trade’s real function is to maintain alliances.
Some trade networks and ceremonies—such as the Kula ring of the Trobriand Islanders, the Tee ceremonial exchange cycle of Highland New Guinea’s Enga people, and the Siassi trade network upon which I stumbled at Malai Island—became the major means to gain and display status in their respective societies. It may seem silly to us that the Siassi Islanders spend months carrying cargos by canoe through treacherous seas just in order to feast publicly at the year’s end on as many pigs as possible—until we reflect on what Siassi Islanders would say about modern Americans who toil in order to flaunt jewels and sports cars.
Tiny nations
Thus, traditional societies of the past, and those that survived into modern times, behaved like tiny nations. They maintained their own territories or core areas, visited and received visitors from some but not other nations, and in some cases delineated, defended, and patrolled boundaries as rigorously as do modern nations. They were far more restricted in their knowledge of the outside world than are citizens of modern nations, who increasingly use television, cell phones, and the Internet to learn about the rest of the world even if they never leave their own homeland. Theydivided other peoples more sharply into friends, enemies, and strangers than does even North Korea today. They intermarried with people of some other nations, sometimes. They traded with each other as do modern nations, and political
It’s even clearer that !Kung engage in extensive trade of arrows out of choice, because all !Kung make similar arrows, which they nevertheless trade back and forth between each other. Anthropologist Richard Lee asked four !Kung men to tell him who owned each of the 13 to 19 arrows in each of their quivers. Of the four men, only one (Kopela Maswe) had no arrows from other men. One man (/N!au) had 11 arrows from a total of four other men, and only two arrows of his own. The other two men (/Gaske and N!eishi) had no arrows of their own: instead, each was carrying the arrows of six other men.
What is the point of these conventional monopolies and of arrow-for-arrow trading, seemingly senseless to us Westerners accustomed to trading only for objects that we can’t readily provide for ourselves? Evidently, traditional trade has social and political as well as economic functions: not merely to obtain items for their own sake, but also to “create” trade for advancing social and political goals. Perhaps the foremost such goal is to strengthen an alliance or bond on which one can call if the need arises. Trade partners among the northwest Alaska Inuithad the obligation of supporting each other if necessary: should a famine arise in your district, you have the right to go to live with your trade partner in another district. Agta hunters “trading” among themselves or with Philippine farmers regard their exchanges as based on need rather than on supply and demand: it’s assumed that different partners are likely to have surpluses or needs at different times, and that it will balance out in the long run, so a strict accounting is not kept. Each side in an Agta exchange makes major sacrifices at a time of crisis for the partner, such as at the time of a wedding or funeral ceremony, a typhoon, or a crop or hunting failure. For the Yanomamo, embroiled in constant warfare, the alliances developed through trade’s regularly bringing neighbors together under friendly circumstances are far more important to survival than are the traded pots and hammocks—even though no Yanomamo would openly say that trade’s real function is to maintain alliances.
Some trade networks and ceremonies—such as the Kula ring of the Trobriand Islanders, the Tee ceremonial exchange cycle of Highland New Guinea’s Enga people, and the Siassi trade network upon which I stumbled at Malai Island—became the major means to gain and display status in their respective societies. It may seem silly to us that the Siassi Islanders spend months carrying cargos by canoe through treacherous seas just in order to feast publicly at the year’s end on as many pigs as possible—until we reflect on what Siassi Islanders would say about modern Americans who toil in order to flaunt jewels and sports cars.
Tiny nations
Thus, traditional societies of the past, and those that survived into modern times, behaved like tiny nations. They maintained their own territories or core areas, visited and received visitors from some but not other nations, and in some cases delineated, defended, and patrolled boundaries as rigorously as do modern nations. They were far more restricted in their knowledge of the outside world than are citizens of modern nations, who increasingly use television, cell phones, and the Internet to learn about the rest of the world even if they never leave their own homeland. Theydivided other peoples more sharply into friends, enemies, and strangers than does even North Korea today. They intermarried with people of some other nations, sometimes. They traded with each other as do modern nations, and political
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