So this is where authoritarianism arose? And it propagated to other places how? Or is this mostly conjecture and lots of guesswork?
I like fantasy and imagination as much as the next person but I think drawing stark conclusions from architecture and "graffiti" should be taken with a grain of salt. And I guess ancient Egyptians were not authoritarian, or, what exactly were they?
I don't think the headline aligns with the article, at all.
The article is reporting academic work that postulates the elements that moved people from bands to authoritarianism, and how this particular Lima, Peru site highlights this anthropologic theory, rather than identifying a specific location where, pandemic-like, authority began.
That is a much nicer interpretation of the article. I didn't get that out of it, but after reading your comment, and re-reading the article, perhaps the archaeologist meant that, but the reporter failed to make that clear. I can certainly believe that.
I think the archaeologist almost surely meant this and the reporter completely screwed up the story.
It would be functionally insane to think that authoritarianism came fundamentally out of a New World archaeological site that is 3000 years ago. For example, in order to sustain this belief you would have to believe that someone from this culture traveled to Africa and then invented time travel, so that they could go back to the mid-2000s BC and give the idea to the Old-Kingdom Egyptians.
Just to give some numbers by rectal extraction: I am about 98% sure that a seasoned academic from Stanford would not be so clumsy with his speech as to say outright that he thought this had happened; I am only maybe 75% sure that a given reporter understands a given scientist's research, so given that we have this report I'd estimate .98 * .25 / (.98 * .25 + .02 * .75) = 94% chance that the reporter misunderstood the scientist, and only a 6% chance that the scientist really believes what the reporter was saying. It's possible but I definitely think it's highly unlikely.
To some extent that's true but they still draw conclusions from inferring things from the architecture and graffiti and then they take that to make conclusive statements about what exactly was happening there and why.
Yeah exactly. It'd be like thinking we can trace "fire" to a single location. These things arise with "need". The right conditions present themselves and these things (inventions, discoveries processes, rituals, etc, etc) arise to fill in the vacuum. Just like this archeologist probably feels some pressure to produce something exciting during his fellowship at the center.
It sounds more like this is an example of the rise of authority within a specific society, examined as a window onto social processes at the beginning of the development of authority. There is no way that cultural phenomena from Chavin disseminated worldwide.
We had a whole bunch of degenerates who publish papers which prove that so-called proto-Russians wrote Vedas because symbols similar to swastikas has been found on some
excavations somewhere in taiga.
Idiots, idiots everywhere.
The formalized process of extraction of knowledge of underlying fundamental principles from surrounding Brahman is what we call scientific inquiry. The goal, emphasised by Buddha, is to see things as they are, without piling up meaningless abstraction and producing himeras and dogmas.
According to the principle of similar environmental conditioning, similar social formations would emerge due to similar selection pressures. The notion of authority goes back to families with dominant individuals and to the collective child care as an effective evolutionary strategy.
"Scientists" who have understood as little as this would never have published such nonsense like a single origin of phenomena which is a natural adaptation and is shared among many animals.
Similarly, segregated societies could arrive at similar symbols and notions independently, by observing and reflecting on the similar (the same) environment, without any connection whatsoever.
Yeah, because authority isn't natural in animals, primates included, and people never accumulate more than others in basic economies, and never use power or influence over others...
...for all definitions of animals that don't exclude humans, yes. Humans have unique characteristics that are central here, like effective use of abstract language, social stratification, and socially managed resources.
Your degree in anthropology blesses us all with your judgment—here I was thinking I might not understand the underlying research correctly. This community is the best!
> ... visitors were elite pilgrims, local leaders from far-flung parts of the Central Andes. These people were looking for justification to elevate their own status and their positions of control in society. After their experiences at Chavín, they would use the experiences to more adroitly disseminate messages of authority to their own people, the researchers said.
Just like visitors to Burning Man, Coachella and Davos
Sort of but not really. I don't think Putin or Xi or Assad gained further authority by attending any of those. I say sort of because it depends on how much you are willing to distort the meaning of "authoritarianism".
Those guys have already kind of maxed out their authority. Anyway, they're more like the high priests in this analogy.
What about the high school senior who's looking to be the next student body president, or the mid level manager looking to be promoted into the executive layer?
Interested people should see this team-up by anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow: https://vimeo.com/145285143
They're writing a book on the topic of the origins of inequality. One interesting thing is how seasonal it was. (After all, for maybe 75k years, humans could theorize about society as well as any of us.) Fairly recently, we made temporary structures of hierarchy permanent.
Related: has anyone here read "Society Against the State"[1]? I've been meaning to start reading it but haven't as of yet. It's a set of essays; supposed to be based on some good anthropological work done by Clastres.
If you have, interested to hear critical etc thoughts on his views.
More like, the same tools were implemented everywhere about the same time. For example, exploiting water sources as part of your tools to control people is a big part of early empire building efforts in China and Mesopotamia. Without water you really can't grow much food. And without a regular source of food you're easier to kill off without risking soldiers. So, it stands to reason that our civilization went down this path due to the factors of production regarding agriculture. All it would take is a few strong and organized bands of thugs to manhandle the rest of the population. Add religion or some weird myth to back up authenticity of the authority then you got a solid base from which to expand and influence other areas. It's also why areas like Zomia came into being as empires clashed then people got tired of the nonsense and fled quite literally for the foothills of mountain ranges. It seems to me it's odd the anthropologists didn't notice this pattern in the stories, written records, and art of each culture examined. It's a hard pattern to miss. I wonder if we as a civilization have become so indoctrinated in seeing authority as authentic and desirable that we can't see how often it's propped up by fear of reprisal and blind faith.
I like fantasy and imagination as much as the next person but I think drawing stark conclusions from architecture and "graffiti" should be taken with a grain of salt. And I guess ancient Egyptians were not authoritarian, or, what exactly were they?