Flannery and Marcus wrote:
We have seen that agricultural villagers do not surrender their equality without a fight. No sooner does one social segment achieve elite status than its privilege is challenged, forcing it to resume its quest for supremacy. Cycling between ranked and unranked was probably common in the preindustrial world. Eventually, however, the leadership roles in some societies became hereditary in perpetuity. One part of the world where hereditary rank flourished was the South Pacific. To be sure, most Polynesian islands were colonized by people from places that already featured some degree of inequality. On a number of archipelagoes, however, the level of inequality continued to escalate after the first canoes arrived.
Anthropologist Irving Goldman once took a close look at 18 Polynesian societies. He succeeded in identifying three widely shared sources of chiefly power. All Goldman intended to do was break down hereditary Polynesian leadership into its component parts. Afterward, by recombining those parts in different ways, he hoped to account for the variety in Polynesian societies. As it turned out, however, Goldman gave us a way of comparing rank societies worldwide.
The central concept of chiefly power was a life force the Polynesians called mana. Goldman defines mana as an odorless, colorless, invisible, supernatural energy that pervades people and things. To be sure, all the societies we have examined so far believed in a life force and had ways of accumulating or losing it. In Polynesia, however, people of high rank were automatically born with more mana. The person with the largest supply of mana was the chief …
A second source of power in Polynesia was tohunga, a term usually translated as “expertise”. Tohunga could refer to administrative or diplomatic skill, ritual skill, or craftsmanship. While innate talent was certainly involved, individuals could increase their expertise through education, training, or apprenticeship. Sometimes a chief would provide incentives to the craftsmen who produced his sumptuary goods.
The third of Goldman’s sources of power was toa. While toa referred to a durable tree known as “ironwood,” it was also a metaphor for bravery and toughness. Toa was applied to warriors in general, and especially to those who distinguished themselves in battle. A key aspect of toa was that it allowed for a certain degree of social mobility. A warrior of humble birth could rise in prominence to the point where he had to be taken seriously, even by chiefly individuals …
All chiefly Polynesian societies relied on a combination of mana, toa, and tohunga. The emphasis, however, was different from island to island … Polynesian societies did not oscillate between ranked and unranked, as the Kachin and Konyak Naga did. The island societies, however, had their own form of cycling: status rivalry. Polygamous chiefly families produced brothers, half brothers, and first cousins who were almost equal in rank. Sometimes the heir to a chiefly office did not control as many warriors as his ambitious junior rival. In such cases assassination, overthrow, and usurpation could cause one chiefly lineage to collapse while another rose.
All three [sources of power in chiefdoms] had antecedents in earlier, achievement-based societies. They had been transformed by changes in social logic, as follows:
Achievement-based groups pursued their own versions of [supernatural] life force. The Naga obtained it from the heads of their enemies. The Mandan obtained it from self-induced suffering. Chiefly Polynesians, however, possessed it from birth and could increase it or lose it depending on their own behavior.
Leaders in achievement-based societies had expertise of various kinds. They could memorize thousands of sacred names, like the villagers of Avatip, or develop skills at moka, like the people of Mt. Hagen. They could master ivory carving or eagle trapping. In the chiefly societies of Polynesia, however, certain craftsmen were more respected than others, for example, the makers of war canoes, purveyors of sumptuary goods, or carvers of giant statues …
In achievement-based societies, bravery in war was already a path to renown. Chiefly societies converted war to a strategy of territorial expansion. Tired of negotiating for the products of a neighboring region, chiefs might just subjugate the region and demand its products as tribute. This enhanced the value of military prowess …
… We also take note of a change that accompanied the rise of many rank societies: men’s houses were replaced by temples. This change reflects an important social and political transition. Men’s houses were built by clans or Big Men and tended to be places where men sat around communing with their ancestors. Temples tended to be places where actual deities lived on a full-time or part-time basis. Temples were staffed not by initiated clansmen but by people trained as priests. Often the construction of a temple was directed by the chief because, after all, there were supernatural spirits in his ancestry.
The Source:
Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus, The Creation of Inequality : How our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire, Harvard 2012 [Chapter 11]
Evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.