From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Thu Jul 26 2001 - 18:32:02 MDT
> "Smigrodzki, Rafal" wrote:
>
> MIke Lorrey wrote:
>
> back to the Heidelberg/Neanderthal period. Tribal cultures are
> actually
> far more socially and economically egalitarian than most any other
> social system
>
> ### Can you name examples? How about the enormous power of village
> chiefs (which translates into most of the offspring being produced by
> them, not differences in material wealth) in some Amazon Indian
> tribes?
Take eskimos, which up into the 20th lived the same existence as in eons
past, and which rarely gathered in concentrations greater than an
extended family or clan (primarily to harvest the salmon runs), and
never had the need for 'chieftans'.
In the case of your amazon chiefs, if they did in fact father most of
the offspring, then the 'tribe' is little more than a polygamous family.
How much 'enormous power' do they exert? Did they do so before they
acquired metal technology?
Cheiftans typically gain power where population pressure due to
technology exceeds local ecological capabilities and conflict for
resources results.
Also look at the early Icelandic culture, which had no chieftans, yet
lived a herder / fisherman lifestyle without nomadism and retained a
hyperdemocratic proto-libertarian form of government.
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