The feast of Kupreishvili family by Niko Pirosmani, Georgia circa 1900
The First Decision
To claim that prehistoric societies were ‘governed’ one must be able to demonstrate high probability that a significant proportion of decisions were made as a group. The way into this topic is to identify decisions which were made routinely, and estimate the extent to which these decisions may have been individualised (by one or a pair), or cooperative (grouped as a whole), or directed (stratified). Broadly the decisions may be separated into subsistence-related actions and actions for maintaining social order.
In the relevant anthropological literature the most commonly mentioned decision is whether, when, and where to move camp. Like so many other prehistoric decisions, transferring a group to different location could be the result of considerations of both subsistence and social order simultaneously. It might have been a move to different foraging grounds because of seasonal fluctuations or depletion. It might be a response to a perceived threat from a predator or an enemy. Or it might arise when an existing group has become too large, complex or fragmented to manage, so there is fission.
All decisions, especially those that potentially correspond to governance, tend to involve trade offs. A gain on one side of the balance sheet often brings about a loss on the other. The prehistoric decision makers were practised calculators. They almost always needed to judge and juggle the upside and the downside of their decisions. In some cases this required taking into account potential conflicts between the materialistic consequences of a subsistence decision and its individual or social welfare functions. Many types of decision involved very substantial gathering and processing of information. In general terms it should be recognised that prehistoric humans did not lead a simple existence. They were confronted throughout their lives with a great many complex and diverse decisions requiring factual knowledge and rational calculations for the optimal weighing of individual versus social needs.
Killing of the Banquet Roast by Max Pechstein, Germany 1912
I will begin by examining how subsistence strategies in a wide range of environments are likely to have required decisions that could well have been be scaled up efficiently from the individual level to group governance. Some decisions were more likely than others to have been discussed as a consultation, or a deliberation, or in order to create consensus within groups of any size. After having considered these questions I turn to the interrelationships between group size and three basic modes of governance.
We can begin with the polarity between the most ‘individualised’ activity of hunting prey and the sociational group activities which inevitably followed, as night follows day. Much literature treating prehistoric or primitive decision making is focused on gaming scenarios in which small numbers of hunters communicate by sounds and gestures about strategies for killing prey. These decisions are specific to conditions encountered in the subsistence field. A choice whether to pursue or not to pursue the prey depends on factors like the visibility of tracks, wind direction, estimates of speed and distance, and any threats posed to themselves by the choice of animal. Some animals are dangerous. Knowledge of animal behaviour is prerequisite for effective and safe hunting behaviour. Once hunters are upon the prey they need a plan of action to coordinate — who will shoot the arrow or throw the spear or the boomerang, and from what angle in order to disable the animal without endangering themselves. Such ad hoc decisions drawing on experience and instinct, are obviously individualised. The action scene might be fast and furious or slow and subtle. Either way it takes place far away from the group. Is group governance at all relevant in the field?
To be sure, one-on-one gaming scenarios do reveal the cognitive sophistication of prehistoric individuals even under constraints of limited communicative capacity. However they do not directly disclose the sociational-motivational conditions under which governance was made possible. I suggest, as an initial assumption, that lessons learned in hunting forays were subsequently debated and gamed as future action scenarios among hunters during rest time. These were, after all, matters of major significance for human subsistence and physical safety. It is then also feasible that experiential knowledge about optimal decision making while hunting was further shared, collated and assessed by entire groups during resting periods. When groups had their precious time to sit near a fire, shelter in caves, cook, eat, talk, laugh, dance, sing, and tell stories about imagined ‘other’ worlds, they might well have prioritised concretely functional discussions about subsistence, which was, in vital and tangible dimensions, the precondition of all leisure or rest time. It logically follows from these observations that language, the processing of knowledge, and all other forms of cognitive upgrading were to a large extent gained in a utilitarian formats. I have begun with hunting, but the formulation can be repeated for all prehistoric action.
Staying for now with topics of subsistence, group discussions might be even more likely to prioritise knowledge and decisions about plant harvesting and processing. Meat is meat regardless of which dead animal it is taken from. Although there exist very persuasive calorific calculations about the energy-giving potential of cooked meat as against plant foods, in the final analysis meat is not as essential for all-round good health. Prehistoric humans could thrive nutritionally with far less frequent meat than suggested by the traditional scholarly focus on ‘Man The Hunter’. Vit. B12 is the only caveat variable to consider when eggs, fish, milk or insects were absent from the diet. Animal hide was extremely useful, perhaps more valuable to man than meat. But there were also plant-based sources for clothing and such like. Plants span many food categories. Some legumes that substitute nutritionally for meat have to be cooked. Absence of plants in the diet was 100% certain to result in sickness and weakness.
Hunting talk was functionally closer to entertainment than plant talk. The dangers of plants are not so great. Knowledge-intensive plant talk was less likely to animate the charismatic personality for whom heroism was the prime time topic to liven up group assemblies. We will shortly look at a clear association between the prestige of hunting prowess and the determination of leadership qualities in governance. But, from the everyday perspective of group survival, plant talk was absolutely indispensable, and cognitively complicated because of the monumental variety of plants. Each plant has its idiosyncrasies of nutrition, location, growth, harvesting, processing, storage, and consumption. And many plants can be employed technologically as vital sources of materials (including rope, thread, cane) for storage, fishing, hunting, and shelter.
Governance of food choice took a more dramatic turn when the object was to acquire knowledge of poisoning. Who would be the guinea pig to test the toxicity of a newly discovered mouthwatering berry, seed or bean? And under what political conditions would the choice of the guinea pig be made? Such a decision might have required discussion revolving on the useful secondary consideration of whom among them was more or less expendable to the group. Even today there are proxy pre-agricultural peoples who sanction infanticide (especially female babies) at times of food shortage or sickness, or for greater territorial mobility when changing camp. The decision of infanticide is taken systematically, and it can be approved at the group level.
Sunset by Max Pechstein, Germany 1921
The complex opportunity costs of food decisions provide further reasons for debating food as a ‘public’ topic of maximal utilitarian concern to prehistoric peoples. Foods are highly differentiated in their accessibility, harvesting, processing, and preparation. Time budgets requiring calorific, cooking, distance, and labour calculations were a vital consideration for prehistoric peoples. Some foods had to be processed at the harvest before being transported to the consuming group, so that processing time constrained distance travelling time. Cooking time puts pressure on time for firewood collection. The presence of predators near to food sources necessitates brave patrols. Time, terrain, tedium, terror. In the background there was quite often an ingenious entrepreneur devoting sunset rest time to invention and improvement of techniques and technologies to save time and labour, or to reduce the carrying load for group mobility. Innovations also traversed the stage of group testing and group approval.
For these and many other reasons it was necessary for each small society to make its own location-specific, group-size-specific, and skills- or knowledge-specific decisions about how to distribute the opportunity costs most efficiently. They had no governing core. There were no organisations at the centre of society to make decisions on their behalf. Inevitably prehistoric peoples had to pool the available information, assess the contingencies in the light of given distributions of labour resources and consumption needs, and then compromise in order to decide which foods will be prioritised. This is how prehistoric people with a sufficient level of communication and cognition were governed. This is how they weighed utilities, the pros and cons for sets of choices.
In this section I have referenced the writings of Irven DeVore, Robin Dunbar*, Timothy Earle*, Allen W. Johnson, Immanuel Kant, Robert Kelly, Richard B. Lee, Steven J. Mithen*, Ian Morris*, George Silberbauer, and Michael Tomasello*
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