Full Flowering of Neolithic Society
(3,500 BC TO 2,500 BC)
Summary. This chapter describes the full flowering of the Neolithic Period
before the discovery and use of metals. Agriculure, both the tillage and
pastoral branches, were fully developed. In the Near East towns and cities
developed and the arts and sciences. The wheel was invented and the art of
writing, of making pottery, mathematics and the calendar. Writing allowed us a
glimpse, for the first time, of religious worship, myth and ritual. The later
period was characterised by great constructions of stone called megaliths. The
various designs on the pieces of broken pottery which survive are of immense
value in determining the cultural relations of various groups.
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Developments
Beliefs
Organisation
Developed Neolithic
Culture in Ireland
Megalith Builders
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Developments
This
chapter deals with the full development of society in the Middle East, Europe
and Ireland, the uneven development which occurred where quite large towns
developed in some places while in other areas the low rainfall or poor quality
of the soil favoured a nomadic or semi-nomadic culture based on the keeping of
flocks and herds. One feature of this period was the building of constructions
with huge stones (megaliths) even in places where there were no cities. Ireland is famous for its megaliths and the
megalithic culture represents the greatest development of the Neolithic farming
culture in Ireland before the age of metals. There is no
sharp distinction between full-blown Neolithic cultures and the earliest Bronze
Age cultures. The presence of metal at archaeological sites merely indicates
that the use of metal had arrived at that place.
The Neolithic period, unlike the
Palaeolithic, was one of constant development, though this was not even, nor
were all developments adopted everywhere. Nor did developments equally affect
all groups and classes in a given society. It has been observed that some
crofting communities in Ireland just before the Famine differed little
from the earliest farmers who settled in Ireland.
Techniques
were improved in agriculture, new varieties of cereals developed and
cultivated, the ass, the horse, and the camel domesticated, besides sheep,
goats and cattle. Irrigation was developed and organised. Skills were developed
in the working of brick and stone and in the arts of construction. Social
organisation developed so those great projects of drainage, irrigation, building,
or warfare could be carried on. Science in the form of astronomy and
mathematics, was developed. The greatest invention was the art of writing, and
it too was to be developed and simplified until we reach the system we have
today. Warfare became increasingly common.
But on the whole the period was peaceful and the climatic
conditions favourable. There were no real obstacles between Mesopotamia on one side and Ireland on the other. The great development of
the city-states in Mesopotamia, and the kingdom in Egypt coincided with the construction of the
great henges, mounds, and passage graves in Western Europe. The rapid spread of the use of bronze
soon after shows us how quickly a useful discovery could spread.
Gold, which occurs in a pure state naturally,
was collected and used from about 4,000 BC. Copper, which is also found
occasionally in a pure state in nature, was probably found somewhat earlier.
Silver, which does not occur naturally, was discovered when techniques for
refining copper by means of fire were discovered. The end of the Neolithic
period, just before the Bronze Age is often called the Calcholithic period,
from the Greek words khalkos (copper)
and lithos (stone) meaning the Stone
Age with some use of copper.
The
City in Egypt and Middle East
While
agriculture and the arts of weaving and ceramics were spreading throughout Europe the Neolithic culture in Mesopotamia and Egypt was developing into what is called
civilisation, namely a society based on the town. Civilisation was described by
Gordon Childe as comprising the use of the plough, the wheeled cart, animals
trained to harness, the sailing boat, the smelting of ore, the discovery of
wine and fermented drinks, the solar calendar, standards of measurement,
writing, methods of reckoning, specialised craftsmen, city life, and the
production of a food surplus sufficient to support those who did not produce
their own. This was achieved in southern Mesopotamia by 3000 BC. This introduced the period called the
Bronze Age. These developments were entirely independent of the discovery of
metal, and they would have continued and developed if smelting had never been
discovered. The art of writing, and the making of inscriptions in stone, do not
need metal tools. It is possible to inscribe characters and designs by using a
hard stone to grind a softer one. It was with these that the designs on the
stones at Newgrange were produced.
Though town life did not arrive in
Ireland until the coming of the Vikings, Ireland can be reasonably described as
civilised, in Gordon Childe's sense, from the coming of Christianity, for it
was then connected with towns outside the area, or developed substitutes for
them in the monasteries. Despite the lack of towns in the heyday of the
development of Irish society in the Early Bronze period we can note the
smelting of ores, the solar calendar, sailing boats, specialised craftsmen, and
perhaps a method of reckoning. But the great megalith builders relied on purely
empirical methods.
In
the 4th millennium BC the first known civilisation in Childe's sense in the
world developed at Sumer in Southern Mesopotamia. There the art of writing was
developed, and ox ploughing with oxen; there the metal sickle was developed.
The wheel too was invented, both for vehicles and for the potter’s wheel. The
sun-dried brick was improved and hardened by firing in a kiln. With the brick
came the development of the arch and true architecture. The ox was bred now for
its usefulness at work, whether ploughing, drawing loads, or threshing. The ass
was domesticated long before the horse. The ass was commonly used for riding on
in the time of King David c 1000 BC and was still a royal mount in the days of
the prophet Zechariah about 520 BC. The old einkorn,
or single kernel wheat was replaced by superior varieties.
Egypt that had been fairly backward suddenly
sprung to the forefront of progress. Various small villages or towns using
pottery had sprung up since the discovery of agriculture. By about 3100 BC the
whole of the Nile valley was under the control of one
ruler and what became know as the Old Kingdom commenced. Monumental mortuary building were
built, the predecessors of the pyramids. The picture writing devised in Sumer was adopted and developed into the
characteristic hieroglyphic writing. In China too the picture writing was taken over
and was developed in an entirely different manner, the aim being there to draw
the picture with the fewest strokes. A peculiarity of the Semitic languages
brought about a totally different development of writing in the Middle East. Semitic words were formed basically
with three consonants and vowels to form two syllables, and these could be
modified by adding regular consonants before or after and by changing the
vowels. In practice therefore it was possible to convey meaning quite
accurately by only writing the consonants.
The Near East outside the Towns
There
were many parts of the Middle East where there were no towns, and where the economy was pastoral.
Though the narratives concerning Abraham date from the Bronze Age it is clear
that the same conditions prevailed in areas of pastoralism in the Middle East as did in Europe. Abraham was a wealthy sheikh and
equal in military power to the chiefs of the local cities. One text says he
brought 318 men to battle. He had numerous oxen, asses, sheep, and camels. He
paid four hundred shekels of silver for the site of a grave.
Europe
The
city did not develop in Europe,
but many of the new developments found their way there.
Towards
the end of the Neolithic, or Chalcolithic period, in Eastern Europe the culture
of the Russian or Pontic herders had developed by 2,500 BC, i.e. at the
beginning of the Bronze Age into a rich culture called the Kurgan culture after
the Russian city where many of its remains were found (kurgan is the Russian for mound). Its chief characteristic was the
burial mounds over a pit grave. The graves were filled with rich furnishings
that indicated the wealth of the people. Copper, gold, and silver ornaments
were found showing that the use of metal was known. They had wagons with solid
wheels probably derived from Mesopotamia. They too were pastoralists. It is not always
clear why a pastoral form of life prevailed over tillage. The most obvious
reason would be the absence of rain in the growing season, but normally where
grass will grow wheat or millet will grow. It would seem that in this area
there was a small group speaking proto-Indo-European. Nothing is known of the
origin of this language, or the people who spoke it. But experts in linguistics
have concluded that around 3000 BC it was a single language. Its speakers may
or may not have known of the use of metal. By 2000 BC Greek, Sanscrit, and
Hittite had already split off from the parent tongue.
In
Central Europe what are called the Battle-axe, Single
Grave, or Corded Ware cultures had developed. These too came at the end of the
Neolithic period, and were contemporary with the Kurgan culture. Their pottery was decorated
with impressions of cords. The shape of the stone battle-axe is derived from a
copper original, and they had some knowledge of copper working. The theory that
the Battle-axe cultures were derived from the Kurgan culture and represented the spread of
the Indo-Europeans cannot therefore be sustained. The features that distinguish
the Battle-axe cultures are burials in single graves often under mounds,
wheeled vehicles, probably domesticated horses, battle-axes and a copper
metallurgy. These features distinguish them from earlier residents in the
region.
The
most characteristic feature of the later Neolithic period in Western Europe is the great number of great stone
tombs and monuments. These are discussed at more length under megalithic
remains in Ireland. Among the most impressive of the
megalithic remains were those at Carnac in Brittany.
Though
agriculture, and in places the building of megaliths was well established in
western and central Europe by the beginning of the Bronze Age, the older
Mesolithic culture still extended across northern Europe and Siberia as far as
China. But these Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were by now trading with the
Neolithic farmers and were getting pieces of pottery from them. The
characteristic shape of their axes was being derived from metal patterns.
[Top]
Beliefs
Some
authors (like L. and J. Laing for example) are very dismissive of Neolithic
religion. According to them it was not very different from superstition; things
had to be done or avoided to avert bad luck; there were myriads of deities in
every tree, hill and valley; spirits had to be appeased by rituals like
throwing salt over the shoulder; communal ceremonies only took place as part of
other rituals like harvests, markets, or rites of spring. Nor was there any development
during the Bronze or Iron ages, and the description fits in well with what we
know of religion in Ireland just before the coming of
Christianity. So there was nothing like what we would call personal religion,
no personal gods or shrines in the home or locally, no deity to whom the
individual addressed personal prayers or sacrifices, no moral element. This
seems to have been true even in the period of Celtic domination; the
Indo-Europeans had, after all, just a variant of the Neolithic religion. This
is however a very restricted view of religion.
If one takes a broader view like that
of Rudolf Otto in The Idea of the Holy
we could say that religion permeated every aspect of life.
But, on the other hand, the collective worship
of the group, or of neighbouring groups together, whether seasonal or annual,
and performed by the leader of the group or groups, was probably considered
sufficient. This worship by the community might occur but once a year, but it
would involve much time and effort by the whole community. The doctrine of
individual responsibility in religious matters was developed by the biblical writers
in the Iron Age. We should also remember that ideas of religion can decay as
well as develop, and the personal invocation of various deities in time of
trouble that was common in the Near East may have been widespread. It is also worth noting
that outside the Near
East the
great myths and rituals were not written down. Elaborate myths and rituals may
have survived in Gaul even after the coming of the Romans,
and in Ireland after the coming of Christianity, but they were
not committed to writing. It was an outsider to Ireland, Giraldus Cambrensis, in the twelfth
century, who left a garbled account of the ceremonies for the installation of a
chief. Such ceremonies presumably were common until the Christian consecration
of Aed Oirnidhe in 795 but neither the Christian clergy nor those families
who were responsible for carrying them out wished to record them in writing. It
was also a time when most Christian priests just memorised their own rites.
We
know little or nothing about the spread of religious rites throughout the world
of the Neolithic farmers. But when groups became bigger various constructions
were built, some of immense size, which can only have a religious purpose
similar to that in the temples of Egypt and Mesopotamia about which there are written records.
When the ritual became more elaborate we can assume that the duties of keeping
the knowledge and the performing the duties were assigned to a priesthood. The
priests, as in the Bible, would have been the members of a particular family.
The priesthood was however a specialised function. It was connected strictly
with sacred rituals or rites, and
their associated myths or explanations. More general questions concerning the
supernatural would still have been the province of the shamans or their
successors. Though there is no direct proof of this, one can see these shamans
as the predecessors of the file in
Ireland, the druid in Gaul, the vates
in Rome and the nabi or prophet in
Israel. These pronounced on religious matters usually in verse form. In France at least, according to Caesar, the
druids to whom such matters were assigned, were drawn from the aristocracy,
though this was not necessarily so at first or always. First in the cities of
the Middle East, and then in Ireland and elsewhere, knowledge became
specialised, and distinct categories emerged. In the Bible, for example, the
ritual codes of the temple priests, the secular historians of the Davidic
court, the historical religious traditions, and the moral code and secular law,
and collections of moralising aphorisms can be clearly distinguished. The
separation is not complete and the law is combined with the historical
religious traditions, and secular wisdom that developed elsewhere into
philosophy merges with religious beliefs. At this relatively early period, it
is reasonable to assume that there were in Europe two categories of religious persons, priests in
charge of the rites at religious sites, and file
in charge of giving general advice regarding the supernatural.
One of the most basic concepts in the written
religion of the ancient Near East was the creation of the world that was viewed as the creation of a
cosmos or ordered world. The word cosmos comes from the Greeks and means an ordered
world. The opposite of order was chaos. The Hebrews envisaged chaos as formless
waters in total darkness (Gen. 1.2). Everywhere in the world order was to be
seen, the movements of the heavenly bodies, the passage of the seasons, the
coming of the rains (or the rising of the Nile). But this order was fragile and there was always
the possibility that it might return to chaos. So human life and religion
should be devoted to the safeguarding of the order. If the sun and the moon
failed, and the seasons did not keep their appointed order, all human life must
fail. It followed that the most important function of a ruler was to carry out
proper ceremonies to ensure that the seasons would not fail, through the anger
of the gods, or any other reason. It was always possible for a human being to
offend a god, who would then punish the whole tribe of whole people, by sending
plagues, or by stopping the rains.
In
the oldest recorded religious myths in Mesopotamia from around the fourth millennium BC the worship
centred on the natural powers and other phenomena essential for economic
survival. The dying god, the power of fertility and plenty, is a typical figure
(Jacobsen 21). In Mesopotamia this was represented by the myth of
Tammuz and Ishtar, in Egypt by Osiris and Isis. The essential
point in the myth was that the god, Tammuz or Osiris, descended into the
Underworld, and all crops and natural life failed on earth. Then the goddess
Ishtar descended to the Underworld and released him. In the Egyptian version
Osiris is slain and cut to pieces, but his sister Isis collects the pieces
together and he is made king of the Afterlife. The myths of Osiris get confused
with those of the sun-god Re (Hooke 67ff). If we can hazard a conjecture we
could conclude that in the British Isles at least the Egyptian version of the myths was the stronger, for
there was the same emphasis on the burial of the important dead in enormous
tombs. At Newgrange the entrance to the burial chamber under the very centre of
the mound is so constructed that the sun, on rising on 21 December, shines along
the tunnel and lights a stone in the burial chamber.
If
we continue with the assumption that the culture and the language of the
Neolithic farmers was more or less the same in all parts of Europe and South West Asia we can look to Mesopotamia and Egypt for some indications of what the
religion was like. We would conclude that there was a priesthood with elaborate
rituals and myths in connection with the greater cult centres. We should
conclude too that the great ritual events were enacted in connection with
particular aspects of the solar year.
More
particularly, the custom of burying important people in great mounds should be
connected with the burials in the pyramids, and the religious beliefs connected
with those burials. Belief in survival after death was widespread in all the
Neolithic cultures as far away as China. But there was not any generally
accepted beliefs regarding the nature of the afterlife. The Hebrews took
survival after death for granted but considered the abode of the dead a drab,
sad place, to be avoided at all cost until the last possible moment. But it was
not a place either of reward or punishment. The presence of grave goods in many
other cultures seem to indicate a more sanguine view of the afterlife, and a
belief that a person's surviving relatives could make life more comfortable for
the deceased by providing necessities or luxuries for him. Indeed many burial
rituals seem directed at ensuring that the departing spirit did indeed depart
and found an abode of peace. For an unquiet spirit could cause no end of
disturbance for the survivors. The concepts of Christianity are derived from
the religious beliefs of the ancient cities. And when Christianity came to be
preached outside that area there was a large common core of beliefs. The duty
of the Christian preachers was to build on the old beliefs and to correct any
errors they found in them. It is reasonable to conclude that there were
important burial rituals similar to those of the Egyptians, that there were
carried out by the priests at the cult centres, and that only the very rich or
powerful received these rites. The shaman or file would attend to the needs of
the lesser folk.
By
religion we mean not just a belief in a god or gods and personal prayer to him
or them, but the whole complex of beliefs, actions, rituals, personnel, and
structures connected with the supernatural, or what was perceived as
supernatural. Consider the following text from early in the second millennium
BC from the ancient Near East,
"Then
Jacob awoke from his sleep and said 'Surely the Lord is in this place, and I
did not know it'. And he was afraid and said, 'How awesome is this place! This
is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven'. So Jacob
arose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his
head for a pillow, and poured oil on the top of it. He called the name of that
place Bethel [The House of God]; but the name of
the city was Luz at the first" (Genesis 28.16-19).
Here
we see a man having an experience of the supernatural in a dream, and when he
awakes he is fill with awe and dread. He
believes that the god El dwells there, or has made an appearance there, and
that this spot therefore is where god will answer petitions like a chief
sitting at the gate of a town. So he carefully marks the spot and performs a
religious rite there. It was the common practice then to mark off the site with
a boundary fence or wall to distinguish the sacred from the profane, and to
prevent accidental desecration of the site. Or perhaps to set limits to the
activity of the god; to keep the god in rather than to keep people out. The
practical purpose would have been the same: to keep people from blundering into
a sphere of divine power.
The
idea of religion as a perception of the supernatural and the human response to
this perception was developed by Rudolf Otto.
"...everything seems to behave as whimsically
as the events in dreams. Uncontrolled as the contents of experience may be in
this state of mind, they would appear to be so lively, mysterious, and fascinating,
as well as terrifying, that the whole of nature is suffused with an atmosphere
of the awesome and uncanny. The German religious historian Rudolf Otto referred
to such an atmosphere as the 'numinous'". ("Religion," Microsoft
(R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1994 Microsoft Corporation. Copyright (c) 1994 Funk
& Wagnall's Corporation.)
"Early Roman divinities included, in
addition to the di indigetes, a host
of so-called specialist gods whose names were invoked in the carrying out of
various activities, such as harvesting. Fragments of old ritual accompanying
such acts as ploughing or sowing reveal that at every stage of the operation a
separate deity was invoked, the name of each deity being regularly derived from
the verb for the operation. Such divinities may be grouped under the general
term of attendant, or auxiliary, gods, who were invoked along with the greater
deities. Early Roman cult was not so much a polytheism as a polydemonism—the
worshippers' concepts of the invoked beings consisted of little more than their
names and functions, and the being's numen, or power, manifested itself in
highly specialised ways." (Encarta 96 Roman Mythology)[1]"Roman
Mythology," Microsoft® Encarta® 96
Encyclopaedia. © 1993-1995 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. ©
Funk & Wagnalls Corporation. All rights reserved.
The author goes on to note that this practical
businesslike Roman religion fostered piety and religious discipline. It is
impossible to guess how far religion as described in the old
Roman Republic reflected beliefs and values of 2000
years earlier bearing in mind that some things changed slowly, and some not at
all.
It
must be remembered that in religion, as in all other aspects of human activity,
all concepts and words have to be invented, and developed, beginning with the
vague idea of the 'numinous' or 'supernatural, and like other aspects of
culture was spread by diffusion. This development, like many others, took
placed in the Middle
East, and its
final development reached Ireland in the shape of Christianity. But in
the absence of all written records we can only speculate how much of the
earlier developments reached Ireland. The most we can do is to assume that
there was some general connection between religious ideas and practice in Ireland and the Middle East. This aspect should be kept in mind to
balance the rather disparaging view of ancient religion given by the Laings.
Arts and Sciences
The
practical skills that were arrived at in constructing henges and dolmens, and
above all the pyramids have astonished all who have examined them. By
continuous experimentation in every field they were able to build up an immense
body of empirical knowledge. For example, all the substances that could be used
for cleaning, fuller's earth, natron, potash, soda, resin and salt, palm oil,
castor oil, lyes from wood ash etc. were noted, and classified and finally
written down (Hawkes and Woolley 668).
The
knowledge of mathematics and the calendar before the invention of writing
cannot be determined. In Egypt various rules for manipulating figures
for practical purposes such as calculating areas and volumes were devised. A
decimal system of numeration was developed perhaps as early as the time of the
building of the pyramids (op.cit. 669).
In Babylon true mathematics are known from
Sumerian times. Their system based on the number 60 survives for various
purposes until the present day, as in time and measurement of degrees in a
circle. (op.cit. 674).
They
had a calendar based on lunar months consisting of either 29 or 30 days that
had to be adjusted each month. They also had a solar year of 365 days and the
device of periodically doubling the length of one month to make the solar and
lunar calendars fit. The people in Mesopotamia had no era but the Egyptians had. The Egyptian
year of 365 days was based on the inundation of the Nile. Lunar months that fixed the times of
services of the priests were fitted into this. Their year consisted of 12
months of 30 days and an extra five days. However, the inundation of the Nile did not commence on exactly the same
day each year. It was noticed, as early as the First Dynasty (c3000 BC) that
the heliacal rising or reappearance of the star Sirius usually coincided with
the commencement of the inundation and it was taken to mark the new year. They
also realised that with a year of 365 days instead of 365 and ¼ it would take
1,460 (365 x 4) years for Sirius to rise on its original date. As the Egyptians
called Sirius Sothis the cycle was called the Sothic cycle. Though the observation had no practical value
other than for dating events, the chief interest lies in the fact that the very
first day of this calendar must have coincided with the beginning of a Sothic
cycle, i.e. either in 4241 BC or 2781 BC. They would also have needed some
system of writing large numbers, and been able to do simple multiplication or
addition. The purpose of a calendar was to ensure that annual rites were
performed at the proper times.
The
needs of agriculture and of religious worship and a calendar require a close
watch on the movements of the heavenly bodies. The stars and the planets were
associated with various deities, and the comings and goings of the divine
beings too had to be carefully observed and precautions observed lest disaster
befall (Hawkes and Woolley 687). For practical purposes, whether for the
orientation of buildings or other constructions, or the observance of feasts,
close observation and regular adjustments were all that were required.
Predicting future events such as the phases of the moon was not attempted before
the first millennium BC. But careful records were kept from the earliest days
in Sumer.
Probably
the greatest of all the arts developed at this time was the art of writing, but
it was to be many millennia before its full potential was realised. Our modern
society is totally built on the arts of reading and writing and anyone who
cannot read is severely disadvantaged. Documents and forms must be read and
filled in. Streets have names; buses have their destinations written on them.
Even in the last century shops still had pictures or signs. A man could fill
many offices in society without being able to read. He could become a policeman
for example. But even then his inability to make notes and keep records would
bar him from promotion. But in the early days of the cities people relied
exclusively on memory. All laws were memorised and were usually committed to
verse to aid memory. The tribal accounts of ancestors were memorised. The
genealogies of men and animals were held in memory. A man’s status depended on
is ancestry. (In the sixteenth century the O’Cahans could recite their ancestry
through 30 generations.) The entire worship of the temples, the mythologies,
and the psalmody was held in memory. Until recent centuries the Christian
clergy memorised all the one hundred and fifty Psalms of David.
The
first uses to which writing was put were as aids to memory or as checks on
memory. It would be easy for a man to ‘forget’ how much tribute he owed the
temple priests. But if little marks were made on a clay tablet to remind both
sides how much was paid then it was not so easy to ‘forget’. As late as the
twelfth century AD the clerics of the royal exchequer cut notches in rods, or
tally sticks, to remind the largely illiterate laity how much they owed to the
royal exchequer. The marks written down were the minimum required to aid the
memory. In the Semitic languages only the consonants were written down. In the
Egyptian hieroglyphics words but not their pronunciation were written. The
pronunciation of Egyptian words can be conjectured partly from the much later
Coptic which used a Greek alphabet with vowels, and party from how foreigners,
especially Greeks, wrote Egyptian names in their own language. The
pronunciation of ancient Hebrew can be determined partly from vowel marks added
in the Christian era and partly from Greek translations in the Hellenistic
period. Similarly when one king was writing to another the writing was merely a
confirmation of what the herald or messenger announced. Or if a chief
pronounced a decision in council a chief officer like the chancellor would
inform the scribes later so that they could write it down. To this day, if the
Pope gives a verbal decision any cardinal present can relay it to the notaries.
But
gradually writings took on a life of their own. They could be read by people
who were not the principals in any transaction. The documents could be copied
and multiplied, and spread far and wide. As systems of language and thought
developed religious and philosophical thinkers could record their thoughts in a
permanent fashion for their students or for other thinkers. That was however
far in the future. For us the most important thing is that we are given names
of people and places, some important and some unimportant, and we are gradually
able to write history. Regarding those in the region of the city cultures we
learn quite a lot. But in regions which had no writing for millennia to come we
have to be content with the remains of the material cultures discovered by the
archaeologists, padded out with comparisons with the habits of similar cultures
of a later date. Having left no writings or inscriptions of any kind we do not
even know what languages they spoke.
[Top]
Organisation
We have noted the development of the city in
the Middle East and the material developments
associated with it. There was in both Egypt and Mesopotamia a corresponding development in social
organisation, namely the military monarchic ruler. At first the individual city
states had their own local rulers or kings, but then a ruler of Akkad called Sargon I succeeded in
conquering all the other city states and forming the first true kingdom. About
the same time the First Kingdom was formed in Egypt when strong chiefs from the south
conquered the whole Nile valley.
Once
one city developed the idea of concentrating all power into the hands of a
single ruler, everyone had to follow suit. In the Book of Judges the story is
told of how the Israelites fared in the Promised Land. The loose form of
government where the patriarchal ruler of each family or tribe was responsible
for local affairs and defence proved inadequate. So they sought to develop a
monarchy of their own. Samuel told them
‘These will be the rights of the king
who is to reign over you. He will take your sons and assign them to his
chariotry and cavalry, and they will run in front of his chariot. H will use
them as leaders of a thousand and leaders of fifty. H will make them plough his
ploughland and harvest his harvest, and make his weapons of war and the gear
for his chariots. He will also take your daughters as perfumers, cooks and
bakers. He will take the best of your fields, of your vineyards and olive
groves and give them to his officials. He will tithe your crops and vineyards
to provide for his eunuchs and officials. He will take the best of your
manservants and maid servants, of your cattle and your donkeys, and make them
work for him. He will tithe your flocks and you yourselves will become his
slaves’ (1 Sam 8, 11-17; though this text dates from the Iron Age, the system
of monarchy dates at least from the Bronze Age of even earlier).
Samuel
could have put it differently. A king may provide adequate defence but he will
be expensive. Israelite society was at this time, the early Iron Age, as we can
see, stratified into at least masters and servants. The king could conscript
the young men of the free families into his army of charioteers and infantry.
The women of the free families could be taken to act as cooks, and perfumers,
and bakers. The servants, men and women, and the working animals could be
employed in forced labour. Lands could be seized to supply the king's needs and
the needs of all his chief officers, and people sent to cultivate those lands
and to make all his military equipment. It is not clear what status those sent
to work in the royal household had, but it was doubtless little different from
that of slavery as they could never leave. Finally there was a ten per cent tax
on all produce of the land
But
the local chiefs and heads of families still remained in their places, and
under the king still enjoyed all their local powers, and still were responsible
for local government and administration. As long as the taxes were paid regularly,
and the requisite numbers of warriors and women and workmen supplied to the
king's officers there would be no trouble. Even later, when empires like that
of the Assyrians were formed out of conquered states like Israel local administration was unchanged.
The super-state was added on top. The king of Israel and the other local kings were made
responsible for collecting the annual tribute from the chiefs of the tribes,
and keeping the peace. Tribute and tribe are derived from the same Latin word tribus. If the tribute was paid
regularly there was no trouble; otherwise their country was ravaged. Revolts
occurred regularly as each new ruler succeeded to the throne, and he had to
re-establish his authority by force. An organised bureaucracy and appointed
prefects of provinces dated from the time of the Persians, about 600 BC and was
adopted by the Chinese and the Romans, and from it is derived our modern bureaucratic
administrative systems. Interestingly the Philistines never developed a
monarchy but each of their five towns or cities had its own ruler. They were
conquered by the Israelites after the Davidic monarchy was formed but were not
finally subdued until the Persian conquest. (As late as the beginning of the
seventeenth century in Ireland, the chief of the O’Neills tried to
stipulate that he would be subject to the king provided that his sub-chiefs
were subject to himself. This the ministers of James I would by no means
allow.)
At
every level ownership of land and the limitations of exchange and of transport
dictated many aspects of the organisation of society. This is not to adopt the
Marxist fallacy that relations to the means of production necessarily dictated
what a given society was like. What it did was to impose restraints. Every
household, i.e. every extended family, had to have a piece of land to support
it. If a piece of land was set aside for the support of those tending the local
shrine then the local priesthood had to be passed on from father to son. So too
every important smith or craftsman had to have his piece of land. Every
merchant, right down to the end of the Middle Ages, had his own farm even if he
lived in a town. A king or chief who had a large household to support had to
have several estates with farms to support him, and he moved from one to
another as the produce of each farm was used up. By the early Middle Ages, when
roads and wagons were reasonably improved, it was possible for a bishop to have
farms up to forty miles from his cathedral. Later still when money rents became
the norm distance was no object. However, in Neolithic times this would not
have been feasible. For each farm the chief would have had to appoint an
overseer and this office would have been handed on from father to son. Much
later, in Irish monasteries, the elective office of abbot was handed on within
the family, and the office of overseer of the monastic lands was handed on from
father to son.
Though no written records survive, it would
seem from the finds of grave goods that outside the area of the city states the
patriarchal system developed in a way
that concentrated more wealth and power in the hands of the chief and his
immediate family.
When
possessions were few and the children of the chief received favoured treatment
the situation was tolerable. But when wealth and possessions increased younger
sons found their position of dependence for everything intolerable. Hence the
later attraction of forming or joining roving warbands to raid the
neighbourhood. The successful leader of a warband stood a better chance of
being chosen as chief. Or failing that they could enlist as mercenaries in a
powerful kingdom.
More
important was the form of organisation that developed among the nomadic
pastoralists of the steppes of southern Russia. The flocks and herds were not split
and given to individual families. Instead, the local headman seems to have
developed into an aristocratic chief and the extended family of relatives or
descendants of the chief formed what was called the tribe. It was adopted in
the whole region outside the area of the city states, in the steppes and
forests of the north, in the deserts of the Middle East, and in the grasslands and forests south of the Sahara.
Not all members of the 'tribe' or ‘clan’ were related to the chief.
There were always numerous servants and herdsmen attached to the tribe. Abraham
had servants and herdsmen and his son Isaac had herdsmen also. There would also
be captured slaves and the descendants of such slaves. Widows and orphans might
seek to be allowed to join a travelling band. Traders and smiths might be
attached to the ruling clan for long periods. The child of a slave wife did not
necessarily have a right to membership of the family (Genesis 21.10). When a
successful band conquered other peoples the vast majority of the population
they now ruled would not be connected to the chief or his family. The brothers,
sons, and nephews of the successful chief or leader of the warband would be
given flocks and herds and a piece of the conquered territory to hold and
exploit.
Power,
especially in matters of war and the exacting of tribute was centred in the
hands of a chief who was also the leader of the warband. Everyone coming to the
chief to ask for the exercise of any of his functions had to present a gift.
Anyone, especially merchants, wishing to pass through his territory had to pay
a tribute. Lesser conquered tribes also had to pay tribute. Later still
Christian missionaries had to present their gifts before they were allowed to preach,
as St Patrick noted. He also found that the gift at times provided no
protection from robbery by the chief, and his best protection was to secure the
friendship of other chiefs. He also found that the only way to get justice was
to keep paying the chiefs. No gift, no judgement. The chief then distributed
all the tribute and the booty, mostly to his immediate relatives. A good chief
did not keep the great bulk of the gifts and booty to himself, but distributed
it widely with a ‘princely’ generosity. It is easy to be lavish with other
people’s property.
Windmill Hill Culture in Britain
The
earliest farming cultures in Britain developed into a hybrid culture,
exemplified by the Windmill Hill site from after 4000 BC. This secondary Neolithic
is known as known as the Windmill Hill culture (Stover and Kraig 46). The
people were active traders. They traded with the Mesolithic peoples who brought
goods from Ireland and the Continent. They dug out deep flint mines in places like Sussex where there were excellent flints in
the chalk. There was also a well-developed pottery industry in Cornwall, the products of which were
transported for long distances. The downs had by then become treeless because
of constant grazing. There were great long burial mounds called barrows up to
300 feet long and containing several burials. Besides the long barrows there
were great circular mounds beneath which was a stone lined tunnel leading to a
burial chamber. This latter idea was probably imported from the Continent and
is found only in areas where there is good stone. Windmill Hill type-pottery is
found in both. There were enormous earthen circular structures called causwayed
camps. These were probably corrals for cattle at the autumn roundup.
Stock-rearing then and for long after was conducted on the principals of the
open range, and doubtless there was as much chance of rustling as there was
much later. The round-up would have involved festivities, banqueting, and
marriages. They were regarded as important for they could take 100,000
man-hours to construct (Stover and Kraig 46ff; Laing, L. and J. 99ff)).
Regarding their construction, can assume from what was the practice in India and elsewhere until recently, that the
men dug out the soil with pickaxes and shovels made from antlers and bones, and
the women carried the soil in baskets on their heads. There were also the
earliest henges or rows of standing stones.
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Developed Neolithic Culture in Ireland
There
is nothing to add to what has been said above about the developed Neolithic
Culture in Western
Europe and Britain. Social organisation, farming
techniques, beliefs, and so on were the same. As noted earlier it is likely
that the ownership of property was being transferred to smaller family groups
of four or five generations. Pottery reached Ireland about the beginning of this period.
Its use was not necessarily widespread as wooden and leather containers could
also be used. Metal was of course unknown. Later in the period corded ware
reached Ireland. Small spelt wheat also was
introduced. There were many parts of Ireland that had no megaliths, but there was
seemingly no differences between those parts which had megaliths and those
which had not. The Atlantic Period was coming towards its end with a secondary
climatic optimum about 3000 BC. This was the time when the sea rose to its
greatest height after the melting of the ice. The somewhat cooler, dryer
Sub-Boreal period commenced about 2700 BC. Though this would favour grasslands
over forests in Central and Eastern Europe, and perhaps favour pastoralism over
tillage, yet in Ireland initially the differences would have
been slight, and probably affecting only the tops of hills. As always in Ireland, the fact that it was largely or
completely surrounded by sea would have lessened the effects of climate-change,
especially with regard to rainfall. Today, Ireland is at the margin of
cultivation of cereals derived from the Middle East, and oats, a Western
European plant, in parts of Ireland is often the only viable cereal. This would
not have been the case in the warmer Neolithic period. Grass did not predominate
over forest until the Bronze Age (Bellamy 123). The domesticated horse had not
yet reached Ireland.
Neolithic
populations in Northern Europe were constantly shifting the sites of their
villages, and there is little doubt that this continued in Ireland until well
on in the Bronze Age at least. But it was necessarily true always and
everywhere. The basic reason for the shifting was the decline in the fertility
of the soil, and it was easier just to shift the village every so often as
another patch of bush was cleared. But
on some islands in the Orkneys where the villages were contiguous and all the
land on the island was claimed, and there were rich sources of food, of fish,
shellfish, and birds’ eggs to hand the villages were probably permanent. So too
in Ireland, on the farms attached to the shrines the settlements of the priests
were likely to be permanent. The huts of the herdsmen and tillers of the soil
could be moved around, or else the infield-outfield system of cultivation could
have been used. In this system, all the manure from the animals would have been
put on a continuously cultivated part near the homestead. As the lighter
forests were cleared there were considerable difference made to the landscape
in various parts. In the north of Britain and in most of Ireland, bogs
developed on the mountains. In southern Britain, the trees were replaced by
grass. In parts of Ireland where Bellamy made his investigations, where an
exhausted soil was abandoned it was replaced by scrub which if left alone would
eventually return to forest cover. There can be little doubt that the system of
the tuatha or petty chiefdoms came
into existence in some form. There would be several farmsteads belong to
individual extended families, surrounded by large tracts of communal grazing in
forests, scrubs, and marshes. Within the more or less defined areas of the
tuath, the huts and cultivated areas could be moved around.
The
indications are that the economy of Ireland from 3000 BC onwards was a more
pastoral one. This trend continued into the Bronze Age (ibid.). Again there is
no obvious reason why this should be. If however warfare was endemic herds and
flocks might have been easier to protect than cultivated crops. The flint
factories in Antrim corresponded to the flint mines in Sussex. The advanced
Neolithic Culture in Ireland may be taken as covering the same period as the
Megalithic culture, namely from 3800 BC onwards. The first Beaker pottery,
representing the start of the Bronze Age, appeared in Ireland about 2500 BC and
is found, among other places, at Newgrange. As at Stonehenge, the appearance of
beaker pottery did not prevent the continued development of the site. At this
time Tara was occupied.
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The Megalith Builders
The
megalithic works appear almost as soon as the farming in Western Europe, so
there is no question of a simpler society slowly evolving into a more complex
one. The period of the great earthworks and henges, which was in full flower in
the British Isles about a thousand years after the first farmers arrived, has
been called the secondary Neolithic culture. Secondary Neolithic coincided in
time with the megalithic culture, but not all-secondary Neolithic societies
used megaliths. The construction of the great henges, dolmens, and passage
graves coincided in time with the development of the city states in the Middle
East and the great works like the pyramids. Megalithic and chalcolithic are not
synonymous, though both were in the Neolithic period. They are more or less
contemporaneous, but megalithic refers to the period and the culture in Western
Europe where great stone monuments were built. Chalcolithic cultures refers to
those areas where copper was beginning to be used. The two regions did not
coincide.
There
are several mysteries connected with the megaliths: how were their builders
connected with the Neolithic farmers, how were they constructed, what was their
purpose, what was their connection with the grave mounds, what was their
connection, if any, with the pyramid-builders in Egypt, why do they occur in
some places and not others?
Apart
from the centre of France they are to be found almost exclusively in a great
crescent from Malta to the Orkney and Shetland Islands. They are found in the
western half of Britain but scarcely at all on the eastern side. They are not
found at all in the area influenced by the Danubian farmers. There are few in
the Mediterranean lands
It
seems that they were all connected in some way with the burial of the dead.
This was also very important in the culture of the Egyptians, but the earliest
megaliths antedate those in Egypt. The pyramids in Egypt are in fact copies in
stone of the earlier brick prototypes in Mesopotamia and are later than the
great megalithic constructions in western Europe. On the other hand
construction in stone is clearly derived from some point in the South West
Asia/Mediterranean culture area. Construction in stone is a technique like any
other which is invented in one place and spreads to others. The Chinese for
example did not use stone, and the original Great Wall was made of packed
earth. The later use of stone and brick was brought to Northern Europe by the
Romans and lapsed with their departure. It was brought back again by Charlemagne's
architects. So it is reasonable to connect its place of origin with the
Mediterranean, and indeed in general with the wave of Mediterranean farmers who
came from there. Yet, by-and-large, stone was not used for dwellings. Though it
was not a feature of the earliest wave of farmers it followed shortly
afterwards. It should be connected with a movement of ideas, not of peoples. It
is also clearly connected with funerary arrangements.
Three
basic types of megalithic tombs may be mentioned. Court cairns are arrangements
of comparatively small stones on a roughly rectangular shape ending in an open
claw. The second, which give their name to the period, are in the form of a
great capstone which can weigh as much as fifty tons, on top of three or fours
stones. The third is a great mound with a passage formed of stones leading into
a burial chamber in its heart, just as the burial chamber in the Egyptian
pyramids are in their hearts. These round mounds of earth correspond to the
long burial barrows of earth in England and elsewhere, so there were obviously
local variations in building practice if not in belief. Yet there was no
attempt, as in Egypt, and elsewhere to furnish the deceased with elaborate
grave goods to assist him in the next life.
We
do not know how much timber was used in and around the earliest court cairns.
The Laings suggest that there could have been a wooden portal in front and an
enclosure with wooden huts within it. The body of a deceased person would have
been exposed to the elements, and protected from animals, until nothing was
left but bones, which would then have been interred (Laing and Laing 157f).
Combined with the absence of grave goods this might suggest that the idea was
to confine the spirit of the deceased and assist it on its way, and to prevent
it hovering around the dwellings of the living.
Various
studies have shown that a large number of men was not required to erect the
huge stones. Quite a small number of men with levers and ropes would have been
sufficient. Nor was a vast social organisation like a kingship or temple
priesthood required to organise the construction. The evidence we have
indicates that there were no great differences in wealth in the early period,
and the houses of chiefs were little different from those of others. The
largest house resembled that of a petty chief in the Dark Ages after the fall
of the Roman Empire (Laing and Laing 144ff).
Court
cairns were the earliest form of megalithic construction in Ireland and they
have been dated to from 3,800 BC.
The
mound at Newgrange is surrounded by a circle of stones after the manner of the
henges in England, and may have antedated the mound.
There was no fixed form of design, and successive
generations could and did modify the work of their predecessors. As mentioned
above, the passage is aligned with sunrise on midwinter day, and the circle of
stones may have at first functioned as a calendar. It this were so then the
calendar of the Near East had reached Ireland. The stones at Newgrange are also
noted for their incised spiral decorations, of which no explanation is obvious,
though clearly the design was regarded as important. The dwellings associated
with it are from much later in the Bronze Age. What has been said above about
beliefs and rituals in the developed Neolithic period may be applied to
Newgrange and other cult and burial sites in Ireland
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