[HN Gopher] Ancient Eastern European mega-sites: a social levell...
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Ancient Eastern European mega-sites: a social levelling concept?
Author : smartmic
Score : 76 points
Date : 2024-05-14 11:06 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cambridge.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cambridge.org)
| mihaic wrote:
| For a while now, I've been working on a theory that these mega-
| sites emerged for matchmaking purposes.
|
| Basically, I see it most men and women had a bad deal in choosing
| their mate in inegalitarian villages, some temporary festivals
| were held where an example of more fairness being possible was
| shown and then these mega-sites merged festivals and village in a
| location that now had hundreds of potential matches for everyone.
| seper8 wrote:
| So what facts do you have to support this theory?
|
| My man, it's time to lay off the dating apps ;)
| mihaic wrote:
| There are almost no archeological records for social
| dynamics, so they usually get ignored, or you're forced to
| base theories on some exercises of imagination. If you were
| to discover in 1000 years a smartphone without data on it, I
| doubt you could infer modern social media without some
| guesswork. You'd get photos, calls, navigation from it having
| GPS, but not endless hours scrolling feeds.
|
| For this matter, what's the point in having a huge village? I
| can only see protection against warfare and forcing fairness
| in social interactions and on the matchmaking market. Other
| things seem to get worse, since increased density makes
| extracting food from your environment harder.
|
| Adult humans have three basic goals: food, shelter,
| reproduction. They spend most of their energy on these, and
| any explanation of a society that ignores one of these has to
| be incomplete. Maybe the fact that we've moved one of these
| from the social plane onto the virtual makes that harder to
| see. I've been off the dating apps for some years by the way.
| :)
| logicchains wrote:
| >For this matter, what's the point in having a huge
| village? I can only see protection against warfare and
| forcing fairness in social interactions and on the
| matchmaking market.
|
| Division of labour/economies of scale are fundamental to
| human quality of life improvements. Even without much
| technology/industry, there's still a lot to gain from
| division of labour.
| mihaic wrote:
| This was a very egalitarian society, with basic needs.
| All the benefits from division of labour and trade you
| already get when your society has a few hundred
| individuals, and it doesn't give you any incentive to
| grow as large as these mega-sites were.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Isn't trade more efficient in larger villages, too? Like
| economics in general
| mihaic wrote:
| Given how basic their lifestyle was, I'd say you hit
| marginal returns at tens of individuals. Like I said in
| another comment, a stronger reason would be required for
| people to want this scale, and I can only see
| warfare/peacekeeping and matchmaking as reasons.
| flir wrote:
| > Given how basic their lifestyle was, I'd say you hit
| marginal returns at tens of individuals.
|
| You might have a circular argument there.
| card_zero wrote:
| Trading seems a good explanation, yes. A trading
| expedition is a big deal, you probably want cram a ship-
| ton of resources together and exchange all your obsidian
| for salt, or grain for copper, or whatever, in one go.
| You don't want to mess around making massive journeys
| between hundreds of little villages. You want a large,
| famous, easily-spotted trading destination that has all
| the goods ready in a big convenient pile.
| detourdog wrote:
| Most of these sites have astronomical/calendrical
| orientation. I would say the definition of trade has to
| include knowledge and techniques. I can imagine a culture
| developing a steady state around the seemingly consistent
| movement of celestial objects and slowly losing it's
| cultural center has things shifted.
|
| I find interesting that astrology is based on the rising
| of the sun in position of the planets which is distinct
| from a lunar calendar.
|
| What sort of cultural shift would that change create?
| poulpy123 wrote:
| when tinder becomes tinder
| lukan wrote:
| Not sure if I understand you right, but neolithic villages were
| likely way, way more egalitarian than anything we have today.
|
| When you have no material wealth (as a status indicator) that
| can be passed on that divides people by birth and no formal
| power system, then the status will be the deeds of the people.
| And people are not that different on average.
|
| Inbreeding would be rather a strong motivation to get fresh
| blood and have regular festivals to achieve that. But trading,
| and general coordination and communication to fight of bigger
| threats were likely a strong motivator as well.
| throwaway11460 wrote:
| Neolithic communities had both a power and status system, as
| well as material wealth that couldn't be easily replicated
| and ensured one's place in society.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| Are you suggesting disparities in material wealth did not
| exist in neolithic times? Why would you think that?
| Retric wrote:
| No, it's suggesting the orders of magnitude were smaller.
|
| Bill gates has what 1 million times more wealth than the
| average person his age, more? There's no way someone in a
| Neolithic village could get that kind of advantage over the
| average person in a neolithic village. Someone having 10x
| the productivity/wealth/etc sure, but 10,000x just isn't on
| the table at least as considered by the time period. We
| place extreme value on gold where a shiny stone might be
| worth thousands of tons of food, but nobody back then would
| make such an exchange.
|
| Extreme wealth takes social structures to support it.
| People 2,000 years ago had less wealth than today on
| average but you could still have some guy with more
| concubines in their haram than existed in a Neolithic
| village.
| lupusreal wrote:
| The average person is very unlikely to meet somebody like
| Bill Gates. For most practical intents and purposes
| inequality is much smaller than that.
| Retric wrote:
| I suspect most Americas have seen someone with 100+
| million dollars in assets at some point in their life.
| How many people have gone to a Miley Cyrus concert or
| professional sports etc?
|
| The indirect impact is even more profound, consider all
| the propaganda pushed by billionaires buying media etc.
| lupusreal wrote:
| They may have a few times, maybe. Far from a given.
|
| Now consider an average middle class American, who might
| afford Swift tickets, could have on the order of a
| million dollars net worth (albeit mostly illiquid, tied
| up in their property). That puts them two orders of
| magnitude off of Taylor Swift, the sort of person they
| might see a few times in their life. But it puts them
| _six_ orders of magnitude above somebody who 's flat
| broke on rock bottom, and they certainly meet that sort
| of person a lot more than they meet Taylor Swift. The
| inequality gap between a middle class person and somebody
| at rock bottom is wider much wider _and_ more pervasive
| in society than the gap between a common middle class
| "millionaire" and the billionaires, but all nearly all
| the internet whining about inequality is focused on the
| billionaires.
|
| Now I grant you, comparing different amounts of zeros is
| kind of a silly way to think about inequality. Let's get
| a bit more real: the middle class and billionaires both
| take a lot for granted that somebody at rock bottom
| cannot. They both know where they're going to sleep
| tonight, both feel secure in the knowledge that they're
| going to have a roof over their heads, stomachs filled
| with food, medical needs met, etc. Somebody living on the
| streets has none of that, and that difference is I think
| far more profound than the difference between the middle
| class and billionaires. The middle class have to go to
| work and don't own megayachts or helicopters, but these
| are trivial matters that needn't worry them so much as
| somebody living on the street has to worry.
|
| Now what about Neolithic times? I think people at rock
| bottom still existed back then. People who were cast out
| from their group, due to disease or getting on the losing
| side of a power struggle, being a weirdo, or whatever the
| reason. There were probably people who got banished and
| probably died soon after. And I think there were probably
| people who were very popular, who were respected and
| loved by others, or maybe were feared. People who
| benefited from a strong social safety net, who got given
| food by others and were protected by others. The
| inequality gap between them and the banished would have
| been immense, just as the inequality gap between the
| homeless and middle class today is immense. If my
| assumptions about neolithic society are accurate, then
| it's absurd to say that neolithic society didn't have
| meaningful inequality because they didn't have
| billionaires.
| Retric wrote:
| > The inequality gap between them and the banished would
| have been immense, just as the inequality gap between the
| homeless and middle class today is immense.
|
| You can be poor in America and still have access to
| healthcare, food, housing, etc. Almost everything that
| you think of as middle class kicks in at really low
| income levels and net negative assets due to government
| assistance. As in what people own is worth less than
| their debt.
|
| Meanwhile someone exclude from their community in
| Neolithic times could have several days worth of food
| after killing a deer. They had less long term safety, but
| in terms of material wealth or income the difference
| wouldn't be that huge.
| anvil-on-my-toe wrote:
| What difference does it make if I meet him? Our lives and
| access to resources are still impacted by mega wealthy
| people.
|
| I pay taxes that build roads and schools which enable
| commercial tycoons like Bill Gates to reap enormous
| profits. Bill Gates buys farm land, which drives up
| prices and blocks me from accessing that land.
| quesera wrote:
| I don't understand your point.
|
| Bill Gates pays a _lot_ more taxes than you do, and
| contributes greatly more to those same roads and schools.
|
| You were blocked from accessing that farmland before Bill
| Gates bought it, and regardless of who bought it, you
| would still be blocked from accessing it.
|
| There is plenty of farmland for sale in the US, if you
| were considering buying it yourself.
| Retric wrote:
| Bill Gates pays a much lower tax rate than I do, so I'm
| subsidizing his economic activities.
|
| Before a Microsoft employee drives on public roads
| someone needs to have paid to create and maintain those
| roads. Without government spending creating an
| environment conducive to wealth creation you don't end up
| with billionaire business men you get warlords and poor
| people.
| quesera wrote:
| > _I'm subsidizing his economic activities_
|
| That is one, not universally-accepted, perspective, I
| guess.
| iamthirsty wrote:
| > Bill Gates pays a much lower tax rate than I do, so I'm
| subsidizing his economic activities.
|
| Given it's est. he'd have paid $500m+ in income tax in
| 2023[1], I think your calculation is off -- he's
| subsidizing _your_ economic activity.
|
| Just because the rate is lower, doesn't mean the real $
| amount -- what actually matters -- isn't vastly higher.
|
| --
|
| [1]: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/much-bill-gates-pays-
| property-1910...
| Retric wrote:
| He paid 0$ in income tax on all the money funding his
| foundation, ~150x more money untaxed than a single
| unusual large tax bill.
|
| You may agree or disagree with with what his foundation
| is doing, but your subsidizing it anyway.
| iamthirsty wrote:
| > He paid 0$ in income tax on all the money funding his
| foundation
|
| It's a non-profit foundation that's main function is
| giving the money away, funding social and educational
| development in developing countries, and solving huge
| international human rights issues. One of the biggest in
| the world, too.
|
| Why do you think people get tax-deductions from
| donations? Your priority here seems to be more to find
| any reason to slam someone who is wealthy, rather than
| actually for the better of society.
| Retric wrote:
| The point is we're subsidizing his economic activities by
| 10's of billions of dollars.
|
| Some things you might agree with but money is fungible.
| I'd rather pay for someone's healthcare than subsidize
| his multi million dollar yacht etc.
|
| PS: If you really believe in what the gates foundation is
| doing you can give them more money to work with here (
| https://www.gatesphilanthropypartners.org/) but you can't
| give them less.
| quesera wrote:
| I don't think you're using a reasonable definition of
| "subsidize".
|
| By all methods of accounting, Bill Gates contributes more
| to the public coffers than any other human being under
| discussion.
|
| Your definition of "subsidize" is predicated on the
| belief that the state is entitled to a flat percentage of
| income.
|
| This is arguably _preferable_ (though it is,
| historically, a very messy argument!), but more
| importantly _it is not true_ according any existing legal
| structure.
|
| So you could equally reasonably argue that Bill Gates (or
| anyone, really) has any number of other responsibilities
| to the public that you might dream up. He does not.
|
| Exactly zero of your tax pennies went toward the purchase
| of Bill Gates' yacht. Money is fungible, but that does
| not mean that all money is in all places at once.
| Retric wrote:
| I said subsidy which isn't the same as taxes, the
| existing legal structure is happy to subsidize people
| both in the tax code and with direct handouts.
|
| As a simple practical matter, 99% of both his earnings
| and mine are dependent upon past government spending not
| just roads but even stuff like the judicial system.But
| asking everyone pay the same amount while it would
| benefit us both doesn't work because the total is larger
| than some people's income and we really want government
| services.
|
| So if we're stuck subsidizing some people, it's only
| reasonable to base the subsidy calculation on earnings.
|
| As to pennies argument, if he bought a lunch it's
| meaningless to talk about individual subsidies unless
| someone paid a truly astronomical amount in taxes it's
| some meaningless fraction of a cent. But when you're
| talking about ultra large purchases and the lifetime
| subsidies are both so huge and a significant portion of
| his total wealth, it cross the penny threshold for some
| people.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| The inequality is in the political power that super rich
| have compared to the average person. Most billionaires
| can quite easily get access to political leaders, and
| convince them (or legally/illegally bribe them) to change
| the system in the billionaire's favor.
|
| A single common person has next to zero chance of
| impacting any public policy.
| dmurray wrote:
| The article seems to be making the argument that
|
| - these "megasites" were bigger and more urban than your
| typical Neolithic village, and certainly than a typical group
| of nomads or hunter-gatherers.
|
| - normally, increased urbanisation like that would lead to
| increased levels of inequality, for the reasons you mention
| (you can acquire more material wealth through specialisation,
| and it's easier to accumulate it when you don't have to carry
| it with you)
|
| - but actually, from their analysis of floor plan sizes,
| there wasn't as much inequality as we might expect.
|
| It seems a little tenuous to me. I'd like to see their
| conclusions when you add on the error bars for "just how
| strongly family wealth correlates to house size", "how
| accurate is our distribution of house sizes given we only
| recovered X% of them" and all the other assumptions being
| made along the way.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| festivals are also generally great fun and provide a welcome
| change from the otherwise often monotonous daily life :)
| golergka wrote:
| Many Neolithic cultures had literal slavery, and they also
| have had very high levels of violence. There's nothing less
| egalitarian than owning another human being as a thing, as
| well as raping, killing and pillaging.
| aramattamara wrote:
| War was way more abundant and routine in those days. To the
| east of the study area, there was constant presence of nomadic
| tribes. I guess it's easier to defend in large groups. The
| other way to deter invaders is to not have anything to eat
| yourself (hence frequent fires when settlers burned their own
| settlements ahead of enemy).
| dimitar wrote:
| the horse wasn't domesticated yet, this is a really old
| archaeological culture
| bjornsing wrote:
| Interesting. Perhaps the first example of so called "social
| engineering" that we're so familiar with in the Nordics?
|
| Also plays nicely into a pet theory of mine, that "social
| engineering" typically has very different short term and long
| term effects. It seems in the short term you can change social
| roles radically by changing rewards and punishment (e.g.
| communist revolutions). But then people's personalities start
| adjusting to the new environment. After 2-3 generations you have
| radically different personality structures and behaviors in the
| population.
|
| Sadly politics is about the immediate results, and does not even
| attribute the long term consequences to the policies introduced
| 2-3 generations ago.
| dsign wrote:
| Social engineering has been along for ... well, since we ended
| prehistory. The convergence to monotheism with very specific
| demographic outlooks and group self-identification ("we are the
| chosen people, the others are not") is early evidence of social
| engineering.
|
| > Sadly politics is about the immediate results, and does not
| even attribute the long term consequences to the policies
| introduced 2-3 generations ago.
|
| Our modern political systems at the current scale have been
| around for only a few short hundred years. Time will tell how
| they work out, but I doubt they will be eternal.
| ponow wrote:
| > early evidence of social engineering
|
| Or early adaptation of culture to nature.
| Trow839rn wrote:
| Are we sure elites actually lived on those sites? Eastern Europe
| always had "warlords", that traveled with their army around their
| empire (Rus, Avars, Mongols...). Transportation of food and goods
| was not practical over large areas, so the elites moved instead.
|
| I bet those "mega houses" were just for slaves!
| District5524 wrote:
| I think it's pretty far-fetched to draw conclusions from
| cultures that were at the same place like 4500 years later. How
| do you think they could have kept like 10000 slaves in place
| and convince them to remain slaves? And other Cucuteni sites
| had population estimates around 45 000 people...
| Trow839rn wrote:
| I do not have to:
|
| > _The use of house size as a proxy for the economic status
| and social power of households in a society is based on broad
| cross-cultural evidence from ethno-archaeological studies and
| archival sources as it has been found that household wealth
| and house size are correlated in many societies_
|
| Basic premise of this study is wrong, based on recorded
| history from the same region. Nomadic herding warriors do not
| live in houses, and do not leave the same mark in archaeology
| records.
|
| Early agriculture can support a huge number of people, but
| they will be malnourished, and always be dominated by meat
| fed elites!
| card_zero wrote:
| Well, no. I mean kind of. These grain-farming Cucuteni were
| squeezed out by the Kurgan culture, tall pastoralists
| coming from the East (that culture became the indo-
| europeans, us), the process possibly assisted by a few
| hundred years of drought. Ordinarily, the farmers had food
| surpluses, though having all the bread you can eat is not
| the same as having all the meat, admittedly.
|
| Your nomadic herding warriors leave graves behind - Kurgan
| - as well as distinctive pottery, as clues to the general
| area they were being nomadic in, which was initially
| elsewhere while the Cucuteni were thriving. I don't think
| maintaining slaves at a distance works as a concept.
| detourdog wrote:
| Being fed is a pretty good incentive most people are fine
| with any role in the group if they are fed. The alternative
| was doing everything on one's own.
|
| I'm sure individuals had preferred roles. I think in this day
| and age describing them as labor may be more accurate than
| slave.
| temporarely wrote:
| It's a valid notion but is it supported by evidence? Supporting
| evidence would be evidence of periodic burning of villages
| because that's what warlords do to peaceful settlements.
|
| Also it is likely that the notion of "elites" is different in
| our age than in the era before the invention of money. Our
| elites are not elites of mind, soul, or even body. They are
| sitting on their hordes of extracted wealth. Earlier any sort
| of elites in an agrarian society (which presumably precludes
| strongmen type of "elite") would likely be based on group
| psychology and charismatic power (shaman, priests, divine
| representative, etc.)
| Trow839rn wrote:
| > be evidence of periodic burning of villages because that's
| what warlords do to peaceful settlements
|
| Not really. Look at "pax Romana" or Aztecs. Warlords bring
| peace!
|
| If villages are part of the same empire, they are at peace.
| Without central force there is constant local bickering and
| fight. Warlords take their tributes (including soldiers) and
| wage war far away. Or they punish population by killing one
| man in family. There is no need to burn entire village, it
| hurts profit.
|
| People at that time were able to build huge megalithic
| structures. It is safe to assume they could organise small
| army of a few thousands (enough to dominate 20k settlements).
| defrost wrote:
| > periodic burning of villages because that's what warlords
| do to peaceful settlements.
|
| Or not.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned_house_horizon
|
| There's sparse evidence for exposure to archaeological
| literature.
| navane wrote:
| I can see the evolution of roving bands who pillage and burn,
| to roving bands who suppress and extract, to roving bands who
| tax and collect.
| antiquark wrote:
| Seriously, more skepticism is in order rather than looking at a
| floor plan and proclaiming "look, Marxism!"
| Jupe wrote:
| Concerning when an article like this makes assertions but doesn't
| mention key social concerns associated with the culture such as
| the periodic burning down of the houses. [1]
|
| Given the "social strata" ideas presented in the article, I have
| bias concern alarms going off.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned_house_horizon
|
| (edited: grammar)
| baerrie wrote:
| Yeah, the disenfranchised burned down the rich people's homes,
| same dif
| Jupe wrote:
| And burn down their own homes as well?
| digging wrote:
| > key social concerns associated with the culture such as the
| periodic burning down of the houses.
|
| What do you mean by key social concerns? Are you suggesting
| House Burning was a form of intracommunal violence? The linked
| article doesn't support that.
| Jupe wrote:
| Mass burning of homes, on a recurring 60 to 80 year cycle,
| then to rebuild the same structures, seems odd. Not
| mentioning it in the posted article seems like an substantial
| omission.
| digging wrote:
| I don't think I agree, given the motivations _and_ actual
| practices of burning are both unknown. They mention burnt
| homes, indicating they 're aware of the practice, but steer
| clear of including in their study. IMO that makes the most
| sense because while House Burning (which may or may not
| have been done _en masse_ ) _could_ be related to
| egalitarian home size, it 's not clear that it is related;
| and if it is related, it's not clear at all what the
| relationship would be.
|
| The only value of tying the two things together would be
| saying "We don't and maybe can't actually know anything
| about these people," which is useless. Instead they took a
| focused approach to using a _known_ tool, the Gini
| coefficient, to make some specific guesses.
| rickydroll wrote:
| Lice is my guess as to why the houses were burned down--
| that or spiders.
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| Or bed bugs :P
| d0mine wrote:
| How often did towns burn in the written history? Closely
| packed wooden structures are prone to fire -- nothing
| remarkable
| sophacles wrote:
| What sets off your alarms about the concept of "social strata"?
| xdennis wrote:
| As a Romanian, the renaming of the culture really bugs me. We
| discovered it first, in a village called Cucuteni, so we called
| it Cucuteni culture. The Russian imperialists discovered it
| afterwards in Ukraine and called it Tripolie culture. After
| independence the Ukrainians renamed it after the proper name of
| their village: Trypillia.
|
| But it doesn't change the fact that it was first discovered in
| Cucuteni.
| digging wrote:
| Most English publications refer to it as the "Cucuteni-
| Trypillia culture", apparently in reference to the fact that
| two distinct discoveries were made in different locations and
| later recognized as belonging to the same culture. Seems TFA is
| an outlier in preferring only the latter name. Of course,
| neither name accurately describes the actual neolithic culture
| at all.
|
| (Wikipedia elides the ~5-10 year gap between publication of
| Cucuteni and publication of Trypillia... very possible the
| latter discovery was just Ukranian Vincenc Chvojka trying to
| "get in on the action" after hearing about Cucuteni.)
| msolujic wrote:
| Few weeks ago archeologists found similar, older settlement bit
| west from that one, that belongs to Vinca culture, that spanned
| in current Serbia, South Hungary and western Romania Here is HN
| story about it
|
| Archaeology team discovers a 7k-year-old settlement in Serbia -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40220691
|
| All those are obviously connected and related
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