The model that ecological-evolutionary theory proposes for explaining the char- acteristics of the global system of societies (see Figure 6.1) is a modified version of the model presented earlier in Figure 4.2 to explain the characteristics of indi- vidual societies. The only differences are that (1) the unit of analysis is the global system, rather than an individual society, and (2) the model for the global system makes no allowance for a sociocultural environment, since humanity has yet to encounter any other symbol-using, culture-possessing population.
One of the most important characteristics of the global system is the dra- matic change that has occurred in its technology in the last 10,000 to 20,000 years. Prior to this time, the store of technological information available to hu- mans was extremely meager by contemporary standards. If it were possible to mea- sure such things, we would probably find that substantially less than 1 percent of the current store of technological information was available before 20,000 B.P.
Figure 6.1 Tentative ecological-evolutionary model of the determinants of the characteris- tics of the global system of societies
Time 1 Time 2
= Primary influences = Secondary influences
Genotypic properties of human population: its gene pool and the information it contains
Genotypic properties of human population: its gene pool and the information it contains Population The biophysical environment The biophysical environment Ideology
Technology organizationSocial
Population Ideology
This dramatic expansion in the store of technological information has trans- formed the global system of societies, as noted earlier in Chapter 2. Population has increased a thousand-fold in just the last 10,000 years, and energy consump- tion by humans has increased approximately ten thousand-fold. In this same pe- riod, the human population has all but abandoned its historic pursuits of hunting and gathering and turned first to farming and more recently to other increasingly more specialized occupations. During this period, the first towns and cities were established, the principles of metallurgy discovered, writing invented, monetary systems created, the first supranational religions established, and the modern world, as we know it today, brought into being.
Not all societies, however, adopted these changes. Many clung to older, traditional ways of life for thousands of years after the first societies made the transition from hunting and gathering to horticulture. A few of these societies even managed to survive into the last century. As a result, until recently, societies became increasingly diversified.
At the end of the Old Stone Age, variation in human societies was limited largely to the kinds of differences that arise from the necessity of adapting to different biophysical environments. Thus, societies in the tropics differed techno- logically from societies in temperate regions and in arctic regions. This meant differences in clothing, housing, tools, food, and related vocabularies, but these differences offered no competitive advantage, since every society in a given envi- ronment was constrained to adopt more or less the same social and cultural pat- terns. What they did not invent or discover for themselves, they copied from their neighbors. There were probably also differences in morals and customs, but we have no direct evidence of this today.1 One also supposes that societies that were
more successful in minimizing intragroup conflict and in maximizing coopera- tion fared better than their neighbors.
Throughout the vast span of time we call the Paleolithic, or Old Stone Age, variations in size and organizational complexity were limited. The constraints on growth that are inevitable in foraging societies held differences to a minimum. Every society was tiny and this precluded any significant development of the divi- sion of labor and other forms of organizational complexity. Societal survival de- pended primarily on the quantity and quality of the information their members possessed concerning the resources of their own immediate environment and on the skill with which these resources were used to satisfy the members’ needs.
The situation changed dramatically, however, once a few societies began to make the transition from hunting and gathering to horticulture. Now, for the first time, variations in size and complexity became a significant factor in the process of intersocietal selection. In fact, they soon became the dominant factor.
Horticulture, as we have seen, produces higher yields in terms of food per unit of land than does hunting and gathering, and agriculture produces greater
1. This statement is based on the assumption that technology limits, but does not determine, morals and customs.
Characteristics of the Global System of Societies 115 yields than horticulture. Given the genetically based propensity of human popu- lations to expand, unless constrained by environmental or cultural forces, societ- ies that shifted from hunting and gathering to horticulture, and from horticulture to agriculture, usually grew larger than societies that clung to the older technolo- gies. Thus, when conflicts developed between a society adhering to the older tech- nology and one that had adopted the newer, the latter was likely to have more fighting men at its disposal.
In addition, the newer subsistence technologies paved the way for other kinds of technological advances, some of which had important military applica- tions. Horticulture facilitated the discovery of the principles of metallurgy, and bronze weapons gave horticultural societies another important military advantage over hunting and gathering societies. Later, agrarian societies discovered the tech- niques of smelting iron and manufacturing iron weapons, which gave them an important advantage over their horticultural neighbors (since tin was scarce and, therefore, bronze was in short supply).
Finally, the new subsistence technologies contributed to organizational ad- vances that proved of military value. The emergence of the state, with its central- ized authority structure, enabled technologically advanced societies to mobilize resources more effectively and in ways that gave them a military edge. Not only could the actions of fighting men be coordinated more effectively, there was a mechanism in place to facilitate the transfer of food and other resources from farmers to fighters. Thus, societies that adopted the newer subsistence technolo- gies enjoyed a substantial military advantage over those that did not. Figure 6.2 illustrates the nature of the mechanisms that seem to have been involved. While the advantages may not have been great enough to ensure victory each and every time two such societies came into conflict, they were more than sufficient to en- sure the eventual triumph of the horticulturalists over hunters and gatherers, and agriculturalists over horticulturalists, in contested territories. In the long run, so- cieties with the simpler technologies could survive only in two kinds of locations: (1) those that were unsuited to the more advanced technologies (e.g., mountains, deserts), and (2) those that were sufficiently remote that distance or other geo- graphical obstacles provided the necessary protection, as in the case of Australia prior to the eighteenth century.
Looking back over the last 5,000 to 10,000 years, it is clear that the chief threat to the survival of individual societies has come from other human societies (McNeill, 1976). In effect, human societies have been engaged in a deadly game of musical chairs in which the vast majority have been eliminated by losing their territorial base and its resources to their more powerful neighbors.2 The critical
resource required for success in this game has been military might, and this, in turn, has depended on a society’s level of subsistence technology. Thus, societal
2. The individual members of conquered societies have often been spared so that they might serve their conquerors. Thus, “only” their society was destroyed. This has been especially true since the beginnings of farming and the formation of the first economic surplus.
survival has been largely a function of a society’s level of technological advance relative to the societies with which it has been in competition.