Chapter 8: some evolutionary bypaths and a brief review
environmentally specialized societal
types
Up to this point, we have concentrated on
those types which have been in the mainstream of evolutionary history, the ones
that developed their technologies around the resources of fields and
forests. The types of societies we not
turn have adapted to less common environments—two to aquatic environments and
one to grasslands and arid environments (223).
Fishing Societies
No society ever depended exclusively on
fishing for its food supply and nearly all obtain fruits and vegetables by
foraging or cultivation or hunting for meat.
A fishing society only uses fishing as its most important subsistence
activity (223).
Historically, fishing societies are
probably the 2nd oldest type, emerging about a thousand years before
the first horticultural societies.
Fishing societies are considered a specific societal type because a
fishing economy has the potential for supporting a lager, more sedentary
population than a hunting and gathering economy (223-224). Although fishing societies are only a bit
more technologically advanced than hunting and gathering societies, because of
the size and richness of their subsistence environment they are larger, more
sedentary, and more complex (224-225).
Unlike hunting and gathering societies,
fishing societies seldom evolved into a more advanced type because of their
limited land mass.
Herding Societies
Herding societies are technologically
equal to horticultural and agrarian societies, except it usually necessitates a
nomadic or seminomadic way of life.
Herders are like hunters and gatherers in size of their communities, but
their societies are large reflecting the combined influence of environment and
technology (226-227).
The basic resource in these societies is
livestock, and the size of the herd is the measure of power and wealth
(227). One of the most important
technological advances made by herding peoples was the utilization of horses
and camels for transportation (227). In
the end however, agrarian societies would dominate herding societies (228).
Maritime Societies
The rarest of all societal types, they
once played a very important role in the civilized world. Technologically similar to agrarian
societies, what set them apart was the way they used technology to take
advantage of the special opportunities afforded by their environmental
situation. Located on larger bodies of
water in an era wen it was cheaper to move goods by water than land, these
peoples found trade and commerce far more profitable than either fishing or
cultivation of their limited land resources and gradually created societies in
which overseas trade was the chief economic activity (229).
The first maritime society in history
were the Minoans late in the 3rd millennium BC.
Eventually all these societies were
conquered by agrarian societies and either destroyed or absorbed as
subunits. This was not the end of
overseas trade and commerce, since these were important activities in most advanced
agrarian societies. More than 1000
years later, there was a revival of maritime societies during the Middle
Ages. Venice and Genoa are the best
known, but there were others such as Danzig and the Netherlands during the 17th
and 18th centuries (229).
Although similar to agrarian societies
concerning urbanization, maritime societies were smaller in size, republican,
and possessed a unique system of values and incentives that applauded the use
of technology and innovation to increase economic production (231-232).
A brief review: sociocultural evolution to the eve of the industrial revolution
The central thesis of EET is that
subsistence technology is the key to societal growth and development. Technological advance expands the limits of
what is possible for a society thereby improves its chances in the process of
intersocietal selection. As a
consequence, technological advance has also been the basic determinant of the
patters of sociocultural evolution in the world in the world system (232). 12 trends characterize the end of the
agrarian era: (233-235)
1.
growth of
human population
2.
growth in
average size of societies and communities
3.
increased
permanence of communities
4.
expansion
of societies into new environments
5.
increasing
impact of societies on the biophysical environment
6.
invention
of new symbol systems
7.
increasing
store of technological information
8.
increasing
store of other kinds of information
9.
growth in
the quantity, diversity, and complexity of material products
10.
increasing
complexity of social organization
11.
increasing
inequality within and among societies
12.
accelerating
rate of social and cultural change