Hierarchies Values, Rituals and Beliefs in Civilization

I relished in how Strayer’s Ways of the World, chapter 3 speaks about the continuum of rulers. Strayer’s points out that no matter the era there has always been a hierarchy society, “Gathering and hunting people, agricultural societies organized around kinship principle and village life, emerging chiefdoms, and pastoral peoples”. Men are rulers of women. The rich rule over the poor, and this way of life form the world to what we live in today. Hence, its obvious power supersedes the less powerful. Ironically, you would assume that the agricultural era was an egalitarian society, but it was more of a social dominated movement for the owners of land masses (fief). Historically, humans from near and far have always had belief systems, that a greater power is responsible for all human nature, natural nature, and animal nature, ranging from disasters to good fortunes. You wonder are people born evil. Without these ideological attitudes regarding life I could imagine what type of civilization we would live in today? Religion is one of society’s biggest mysteries. Indeed, belief systems, maintain a certain order in people. Ironically, the same order has been used to control the masses. But taken in account that all religions are intertwine and perfected overtime I personally enjoy the freedom of pluralism. I take in account totally, and then extract out what actually works for me.

Gathering and hunting

Gathering and Hunting communities.                                                              

This ideology builds cohesiveness within a community. I really enjoyed hearing how our ancestors combined their man/womanpower to build structures.  In our modern world we’ve slowly moved away from gender based roles due to the complexities of life. Indeed, there is something’s that hasn’t changed drastically. Historically males had more dangerous roles, such as: hunting and killing of large ferocious mammals; comparable to current times of males building bridges and highways. Likewise women roles still consist of daily gathering of children, groceries and so on.   

In the Paleolithic era life for the San people was based on values and norms. They didn’t particularity have a hierarchy system; everyone based life on what’s expected as a member of a cohesive group.

I enjoyed reading the passage regarding “insulting the meat” and how the older members of the group would not encourage inequalities within the group.

“When a young man kills much meat, he comes to think of himself as a chief or big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his servants or inferior. We can’t accept this we refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill someone. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. In this way we cool his heart and make him gentle” (pg. 27).

In comparison in today society we have an enormous abundance of inequalities and in my opinion most come from mass media and the super flux of how the population has grown. “We don’t trade with things, we trade with people” (pg. 27).

Indeed, as the population grew, people changed from small bands of ten to twenty people to hundreds to thousands and so on. It’s evident that the larger the group the more complex situations become; hence, not just for Homo sapiens but for animals as well.

In essence, Robert Strayer’s readings seem more in the field of anthropology rather than history, however one discipline can’t be solely defined as one they all are intertwine.