A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History

by Nicholas Wade

  From Village to Empire

  Social anthropologists usually take care not to imply that human societies have evolved, lest it seem that those that are further evolved are more advanced than others and hence superior to them. But there does seem to have been extensive evolution in human social behavior in forming civilizations such as those of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and China. All seem to have evolved through the same sequence of steps, or at least along parallel paths, when confronted with the same challenge.

  A driving force in all these cases was demography. After the first settlements, populations started to grow. The first settlers lived in villages of perhaps 150 people. Villages would then start to cooperate, both for large agricultural projects and for defense. The larger numbers of people living in these local groups then had to be organized in some way, and this requirement led to hierarchical societies led by a chief. Warfare exerted a selective pressure under which the more cohesive societies destroyed or absorbed those that were less well organized. There was a dramatic change in human social nature that underlay a vast change in the maximum size of human societies. Hunter-gatherer groups tend to split in two when they have more than 150 or so members; by the time of the first urban civilizations that started to arise some 5,000 years ago, people were living in cities with populations of 10,000 to 100,000.

  The first chiefs secured their political power by also holding religious office. They ran their chiefdoms as family affairs, with their relatives forming a hereditary elite. But a group of chiefdoms was not a stable situation, especially if they occupied a region whose agricultural resources were circumscribed by mountains or deserts. Because of such geographical limits, the chiefdoms would impinge on one another if any tried to expand. These conditions made warfare almost inevitable.

  Within each region of the world, it was war between chiefdoms that led to the emergence of the first anarchic states. “Historical or archaeological evidence of war is found in the early stages of state formations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Japan, Greece, Rome, northern Europe, central Africa, Polynesia, Middle America, Peru and Columbia, to name only the most prominent examples,” writes the anthropologist Robert Carneiro.5

  Chiefdoms generally fought one another for territory, killing or expelling those whose lands they took over. But at a certain scale of operations, when the population was dense enough and sufficiently productive to support a ruling class, the larger chiefdoms developed into states. The states fought not just for land but also for population; instead of driving conquered people off their territory, an empire would subjugate them as part of the state’s manpower.

  Growing too large and complex to be managed by the ruler’s family, the states developed their own cadre of officials. War between rival chiefdoms in a region could be a sanguinary affair. But once a single ruler had unified a region, there was a much greater degree of stability and order.

  A general pattern in world history is that states first developed in regions of high population density, particularly along the banks of major rivers where irrigated agriculture was easy. The ancient Egyptian state began at around 3100 BC when Narmer, the ruler of the southern chiefdom of the Nile, defeated the northern chiefdom and created a unified system.

  The Sumerian civilization developed around the same time along the Euphrates River in the region that is now Iraq. In India the Harappan civilization emerged in the Indus River valley. The Chinese state was built by consolidation of the settlements that arose along the Yellow River and Yangtze River valleys.

  All these first generation states began to emerge some 5,000 years ago in the Old World. The process was much delayed in the New World because the population pressure necessary for state development did not begin until long after 15,000 years ago, when the first inhabitants crossed from Siberia to Alaska via Beringia, the now sunken land bridge that connected the two continents. In Mesoamerica, the Olmec state started to flourish around 1500 BC. In South America, the Moche state began around 100 AD, and the Inca empire, the most advanced state of South America, did not emerge until the 12th century AD.

  The tight historical relationship between state formation and population size is evident when looking at the less easily habitable regions of the world. There are no states in the Arctic regions, sparsely inhabited by the Eskimo people. In Polynesia, there are only chiefdoms, probably because the carrying capacity of most islands permits only small populations. A major exception is Hawaii, but King Kamehameha did not unite the islands until 1811 AD.

  A major region of slow population growth was Africa south of the Sahara. The continent suffers from a lack of navigable rivers, and disease makes many regions hard to inhabit. Some of Africa’s chiefdoms had grown into large kingdoms, such as the Ashanti empire in Ghana, the Ethiopian empire, and the Shona kingdom in Zimbabwe by the time Europeans arrived and thwarted their further development. In 1879 a Zulu army armed with spears and oxhide shields defeated a British force armed with modern weapons at the battle of Isandlwana. But throughout much of Africa, the lack of dense populations and large scale warfare, two essential ingredients in the formation of modern states, prevented such structures from arising. Africa south of the Sahara remained largely tribal throughout the historical period, as did Australia, Polynesia and the circumpolar regions.

  The evolution of human social behavior was thus different and largely or entirely independent on each continent. States had developed in the Middle East, in India and in China by around 5,000 years ago, and in Central and South America by about 1,000 years ago. For lack of good soils, favorable climate, navigable rivers and population pressure, Africa remained a continent of chiefdoms and incipient empires. In Australia, people reached the tribal level but without developing agriculture; their technology remained that of the Stone Age into modern times.

  Human Behavior in History

  Although historians usually focus on states and how the actors within them seize the levers of power, in the long term it is institutions that are more important determinants of a society’s fate. Being built on ingrained social behavior, institutions may endure for generations and resist even the most catastrophic events. Russians were still Russians after Stalin, Chinese remained Chinese under Mao Tse-tung; even Hitler was largely an aberration in German history.

  History has little coherence when analyzed in terms of individuals or even nations. But when seen in terms of the institutions developed by different civilizations and races, the outline of a logical development emerges. Though there is still a large random element, the broad general theme of human history is that each race has developed the institutions appropriate to secure survival in its particular environment. This, then, is the most significant feature of human races: not that their members differ in physical appearance but that their society’s institutions differ because of slight differences in social behavior.

  A landmark analysis of human history in terms of social institutions has recently been written by the political scientist Francis Fukuyama. His thesis, describing how each of the major civilizations adapted its institutions to its local geography and historical circumstances, provides a roadmap of human social adaptation and the different paths taken by each civilization.

  Fukuyama’s premise, like that of North quoted above, is that institutions are rooted in human social behavior. “The recovery of human nature by modern biology . . . is extremely important as a foundation for any theory of political development, because it provides us with the basic building blocks by which we can understand the later evolution of human institutions,” he writes.6

  A pillar of human social nature is the tendency to favor family and close kin, and this is the root of tribalism. Tribal societies were the first form of human political organization, given that the hunter-gatherer bands in which humans have passed most of their existence were probably organized as tribes from an early date. A tribe consisted of bands that exchanged women in marriage. Tribal organization i
s highly flexible, and tribes can grow to vast sizes capable of considerable undertakings: the Mongols, whose empire stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the borders of Europe, were tribally organized. The weak point of the tribal system is succession: when a strong leader dies, the chiefs of the component lineages tend to fight one another to succeed him, and the whole coalition may break down into smaller, feuding entities, as was the fate of the Mongol empire.

  Tribes are organized on the basis of lineages traced through the male line of descent. Within a tribe, two lineages may fight each other or join together to vie with a third. Because all lineages descend from a founding patriarch, any two lineages can find a joint ancestor to prove their kinship and affinity as allies. Anthropologists call tribes segmentary societies because of the way in which the different lineages or segments can be fitted together for particular social purposes.

  The tribal system is so strong, in Fukuyama’s view, that even in most modern states it never fully disappears. Rather, the state apparatus is layered on top and is in constant tension with it. In China, officials use their positions to advance their kindreds’ interests, regardless of the state’s. The problem is as pertinent in China today as at any point in the past. Even in Europe and the United States, where family relationships are less intricate and tribes no longer exist, nepotism is far from unknown.

  Tribalism is the default state of early human societies, just as autocracy is the default state of modern ones. Tribal societies have existed probably from the beginning of the human species, and many still exist in the present day. The inhabitants of Spain, France, Germany and England were tribal peoples before and after their conquest by the Roman state. In China, tribal chiefdoms did not start to disappear until the 4th century BC; in much of Africa and the Middle East, tribal organization remains a potent force.

  Given the pervasiveness of tribalism, how did modern states ever get started? Fukuyama’s approach to the answer is to consider the differences between modern states in order to understand which of their features are the most significant. Surveying the modern states that arose in China, Europe, India and the Muslim world, he finds that all had to confront the same principal challenge, that of suppressing tribalism so that the state’s authority could prevail, but that each accomplished this goal in very different ways.

  China achieved a modern state a millennium before Europe. This precocious advance may have had a lot to do with the nature of the plain between the Yangtze and Yellow rivers. The territory is well suited both for agriculture, which leads to population growth, and for warfare, the two principal propellants of state formation. A relentless process of consolidation forced tribal systems to yield to states.

  In 2000 BC, a large number of political entities—traditionally put at 10,000—existed in the Yellow River valley. By the time of the Shang dynasty in 1500 BC, these had dwindled to some 3,000 tribal chiefdoms. The Eastern Zhou dynasty began in 771 BC with 1,800 chiefdoms and ended with 14 entities that were much closer to states. During the ensuing Warring States period, which lasted from around 475 BC to 221 BC, the 7 remaining states were reduced to 1.

  China became unified in 221 BC when the state of Qin managed to defeat its six rivals during the Warring States period. This was the culmination of some 1,800 years of almost incessant strife, during which the demands of warfare shaped the distinctive lineaments of the Chinese state.

  The tribal system endured as long as the Yellow River valley was relatively uninhabited. A weaker tribe could just move elsewhere. As population density increased, the choice became to fight or to be extinguished.

  The pressure on the tribes arose through their mode of fighting. Being based on male lineages, the fighting was done by nobles in chariots, with each chariot requiring a logistics train of some 70 soldiers. With incessant wars, the number of available nobles was eventually depleted. In desperation, some chiefdoms during the Zhou period developed an alternative mode of warfare, that of impressing the peasantry into infantry armies.

  This was not a simple transformation, given that it did not recommend itself to either the nobility or the peasantry. Moreover, it required a complex and imaginative set of institutional changes. Larger armies required raising more taxes to support them. Extracting taxes from the population made necessary a class of officials loyal to the state, not to particular tribes.

  These changes began in several states, but it was in Qin, the most westerly of the seven warring states, that the reforms were pushed furthest. “Groundwork for the first truly modern state was laid in the western polity of Qin under Duke Xiao and his minister Shang Yang,” Fukuyama writes.7

  The Qin leaders built a modern state because they recognized explicitly that the noble lineages of the tribal system were an impediment to the state’s power. Shang Yang abolished the hereditary offices held by the nobles in favor of a 20 rank system based on military merit. This change meant that all officeholders now owed their position and loyalty to the state, not to their tribe or lineage.

  Not only was the bureaucracy appointed on merit, it was also rewarded on performance. Important items such as land, servants, concubines and clothing were distributed to those who served the state well.

  In a second bold stroke of social engineering, Shang Yang let peasants own land directly instead of having to work fields owned by the nobility. The peasants were now directly beholden to the state and owed their taxes to the state, not the nobility.

  But this was no agricultural reform designed for the peasants’ benefit. Previously the peasants had worked under the nobles’ supervision. Shang Yang had them reorganized into groups of five or ten households, which were required to supervise one another and report crimes to the state. Failure to report was punishable by death.

  “If the people are stronger than the government, the state is weak; if the government is stronger than the people, the army is strong,” states the treatise attributed to Shang Yang.8 This was the point of the whole exercise. The peasantry was controlled and taxed. The bureaucrats administered the state and raised the taxes to finance a mass peasant army.

  The westerly Qin state, though long regarded as something of a backwater, now had the political organization required to pay for a substantial army. With this force, the Qin king was able in 221 BC to defeat his six rivals and unify China. Unification brought to an end the deadly game of the 254-year Warring States period, during which 468 wars were fought between the rival players.

  The Chinese had invented the modern state more than a thousand years before Europe did. A finishing touch was added when the Mandarin examination system was instituted in 124 BC under emperor Wu. Besides an army, tax collection systems, registration of the population and draconian punishments, China had another institution, one that the sociologist Max Weber considered the defining mark of a modern state, that of an impersonal bureaucracy chosen by merit.

  The Chinese state arose because tribal organization could not handle the demands of the Chinese style of warfare. With China as a template, comparisons can be made with how other civilizations developed modern states. Europe, for instance, after the disintegration of the Roman empire, had a period analogous to the Eastern Zhou dynasty when its tribes were developing into states, symbolized by the process in which the king of the Franks became instead the king of France. During this period, the number of European polities was reduced from about 500 to 25. But Europe then deviated from the Chinese pattern, because this process of reduction was not followed by a final unification, a Warring States epoch in which one state emerged the winner.

  Why did no counterpart of the state of Qin arise to conquer all of Europe? One reason may be that state building came a thousand years later to Europe, by which time feudalism had secured a stronger foothold than in China. The local chieftains could not be dispossessed in the Shang Yang style. Kings had to negotiate with them. So no European state became strong enough to dominate all the others in any sustained way; afte
r the Romans, attempts at empire in Europe were always partial and short-lived.

  Another reason is that barriers of geography and culture were more formidable in Europe than in the Yellow River valley. Europe is divided by mountain ranges and rivers, and within these natural compartments emerged differences of religion and language. These impediments made it far harder to construct a unified European state.

  China was able to develop the institutions of an autocratic state, ones so effective that China for most of its modern history has been unified, though punctuated by short, disruptive periods of disunity. Despite its autocratic nature, the state was several times conquered by one or another of the various tribal pastoralists, like the Mongols or the Manchu, who roamed the steppes beyond China’s northern border. Yet these conquerors found that to rule China they had to abandon their tribal ways and adopt Chinese institutions.

  A striking counterpoint to the Chinese pattern of development is provided by India. By the 6th century BC, the first states had developed in India, as in China. But whereas in China there followed 500 years of incessant warfare, India did not undergo such a process, perhaps because population was less dense. The principal shaper of Indian society was not war but religion. Brahmanism divided society into four classes, those of priests, warriors, merchants and everyone else. The four classes were subdivided into hundreds of endogamous occupational castes. This system, layered on top of the tribal divisions, proved so strong that no government could overrule it. India thus created a strong society and a weak state, the inverse of the Chinese situation in which, then as now, the people have seldom challenged the state-controlled institutions.