Life Without Chiefs

- Marvin Harris

The essay is written by Marvin Harris who is a professor of anthropology at the University of Florida, USA. In this essay, he describes the evolution of human society. He says that there was no social hierarchy of ruling and ruled class longtime in history. In the beginning of human society, people had nomadic life. But they were very much generous at that time. People used to share all foods whatever available. The present-giver was never thanked for he gifts. If the receiver thanked him it was thought he calculated the contribution and thought being ungenerous. They did this because the giver may become proud and may become cruel. There was equalitarian society. If anyone wanted to be the head and tried to rule the people, the group would leave him alone and would migrate to another place.

But later, someone became the head of the society. But the head didn’t use to command the members of the community. He would work harder than the others and would be more generous than the others. He would be able to give the impression to the others for being generous. He would take the bones and would give fresh and good meat to the others. So he was respected highly. The available sources of the food were divided equally to everyone in the society. Everyone had the equal reach to available natural resources, so there was a perfect communism.

Gradually, a competition started to be the headman. The person who wanted to be the headman started to work harder and collected more food. He would give feast to the people and get more supporters. At last, he would challenge the head by arranging better a feast than the head. Thus the new head was followed by the community members. The head had more collection of the food than the others, and still he was generous. But later, the division between the head and the others was created. Since the head would marry many women, he would have bigger collection of food than the others. He slowly became cruel and started to dominate the people. The chief started to build big houses for him because he had the collection of food to give to his workers. He would give food to the workers and the workers had to work for him. So, the distinction between the ruled and the ruling class was created. Humanity was lost and the ruling class became crueler and enjoyed the power. The rulers became dictators. But biologically, humans are not war-like. The division is the creation of the cultural evolution.