This view of
the world has been largely eroded among historians and lay-people informed
enough to seek out the better kind of historical documentary*, but it's still a
common enough belief, and it's alive and well in the worlds fantasy writers
create. You have your civilised,
sophisticated nations menaced by your primitive tribes. Nations have cities,
tribes have settlements; natives have kings (if they're not republics), tribes
have chiefs; nations have laws, tribes have customs; nations have religions,
tribes have superstitious rituals.
But that's a
gross oversimplification, caused partly by cultural bias and partly by
misunderstanding about what's genuinely necessary for civilisation.
History is
written by the winners, and so is the definition of civilisation. From Rome to the Conquistadors to the
colonial powers of the 19th and 20th centuries, conquerors have essentially
said "The definition of civilisation is anything exactly like us. These people aren't like us, so they can't be
civilised."
Except that
they also ignore or make excuses for all evidence to the contrary. A good example of this is the ruins of Great
Zimbabwe (right) in the modern country of the same name. Until relatively recently, it was generally
accepted that this must have been an Arabic outpost. There was absolutely no evidence to support
the idea, except that "Africans couldn't build structures like this,
therefore it couldn't have been African in origin."
Which, of course,
is nonsense. There were highly developed
ancient civilisations from the upper Nile to West Africa, not to mention the
Egyptians, who were at least as much an African civilisation as a Mediterranean
one. It's become increasingly clear that
the civilisation who built Great Zimbabwe spread widely through south-eastern
Africa, including a major Indian Ocean trading port, and was completely local
in origin.
This process of
marginalising other cultures has been repeated throughout the world, sometimes
cynically and deliberately, sometimes from genuine lack of understanding about
what is and isn't necessary for a society to be called a civilisation.
Fundamentally
(and linguistically) civilisation means a society that's at least partly
urbanised, and urbanisation has to start with a food surplus. A society that can afford to feed people not
directly involved in food-production can begin producing specialists: artisans,
traders, artists, soldiers, priests, nobility, royalty. Urban life also requires a level of
organisation impossible under "tribal chiefs" or "tribal
elders".
There have to
be centres of concentrated population, but these don't have to look exactly
like a modern city, or even the modern concept of an ancient city. There's a tendency to put an undue emphasis on
stone or brick buildings, for the simple reason that they leave the most
obvious remains. The traces left by
wooden or mud structures are hard to detect, but these can actually be just as
effective building techniques for their time and place and don't in any way
indicate a "lower" level of society.
The way
history has always been taught, for example, says that the
"barbarian"** peoples of Gaul, Britain and Germany had no cities
before the Romans "civilised" them, partly because the Romans said
they didn't and partly because no impressive stone buildings have been
found. What they did have were
"hill-forts" like Maiden Castle (left) in Dorset. These are often thought of as purely
defensive structures, but Maiden Castle, for instance, was an area of around 47
acres, surrounded by a palisade and earthworks containing within it homes,
workshops and numerous other specialist buildings. It's believed to have been the seat of a
powerful ruler who dominated the countryside all around.
In other
words, a king in his city.
In much the
same way, our comparisons of social institutions between traditionally
civilised and traditionally uncivilised societies tend to be skewed by our
preconceptions. Many cultures, for
instance, believe that disease is caused by spirits or demons, and it's easy to
smile at the naivety. Consider, though:
they believe the cause of disease is invisible entities invading the body. So do we.
They use the words spirt and demon, we use the words virus and bacteria, but they're all just labels put on things most of us have
never actually seen.
Of course,
I'm not implying these cultures have a sophisticated microbiology of their
spirits and demons, and I'd certainly rather be in the hands of a modern
hospital than of a shaman. Then again, I
wouldn't be that thrilled about being treated by a western doctor from the
1950s, either. The point is that the
assumptions we make about the relative value of beliefs are rarely disinterested.
Or take
military forces. The Zulus who faced the
British army in South Africa are often characterised as just a horde of
warriors — of course, what else could African natives be? In fact, the Zulus had one of the best
organised and disciplined armies in history, which developed out of a highly
sophisticated civilisation. It just
didn't look like a European civilisation or a European army.
Human
civilisation is far more common than is often assumed. It's found all over Asia and Africa, and not
just in the admitted-by-necessity areas.
The Cambodian city of Angkor***, which flourished during the European
middle ages, is now believed to have been as extensive as modern New York City,
while pottery dating evidence suggests that civilisation may have arisen in
West Africa even earlier than in its traditional cradle, the Middle East.
The Americas
were full of civilisation. Everyone
knows about the Aztecs, Maya and Incas, who are allowed the status of bizarre,
barbaric civilisation, but they were the tip of the iceberg. There was a swathe of civilised cultures from
Bolivia up to the Mississippi, rising and falling, interacting and replacing
one another. The Mississippi culture,
whose capital was in roughly the same location as St Louis, was one that took
sophisticated archaeological techniques to find because it built in wood and
earth rather than stone, but it had every hallmark of civilisation.
It wasn't the
only one north of the Rio Grande. It's
no accident that many of the Native peoples refer to themselves as
nations. Many, such as the Iroquois,
were anything but primitive in their organisation. I've also read that the east coast of what
became the USA was not only heavily populated before the smallpox epidemic devastated
it, but its people left many intact towns and villages, which the settlers
merely moved into. I haven't been able
to confirm this from an authoritative source, but I'd be intrigued to know more
about it.
There are societies,
of course, who fit the description of "tribes", and this isn't
necessarily a bad thing. Cultural
success, like evolutionary success, can involve either adapting the environment
to your needs or adapting yourself to the environment. Many peoples have had no need for
civilisation, because they're perfectly adapted to live in their surroundings.
Still, next
time you're tempted to dismiss a culture as primitive because it's nothing like
your own, try walking around and looking at it from all angles. You might be surprised how civilised it
really is.
** The word barbarian is simply the anglicised
version of the Greek word for foreigner,
which didn't necessarily imply lack of civilisation. The Romans used it rather liberally considering that they, according to the original meaning, were barbarians themselves.
*** The
best-known part of the city, the stunning temple of Angkor Wat, was only its
centrepiece, like the Vatican within Rome.
