******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ********************
#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
*****************************************************************
On 7/21/19 11:54 AM, DW via Marxism wrote:
[I should point out here that Marshal Sahlins has been thoroughly diced and
taken down by many anthropologists.
I doubt that any of them have debunked the idea that when game and
plants were plentiful, there was plenty of leisure time. All you need to
do is read Lewis and Clark to get an idea of what a Garden of Eden this
continent was. I think that dwelling on the ǃKung is not useful.
-------
Sunday 1st Sept. 1805. We set out early in a fine morning, and
travelled on nearly a west course. We found here the greatest quantity
and best service berries, I had ever seen before; and abundance of
choak-cherries. There is also a small bush grows in this part of the
country, about 6 inches high, which bears a bunch of small purple
berries. Some call it mountain holly; [4] the fruit is of an acid taste.
We are much better supplied with water than I expected; and cross
several fine springs among the mountains through which we pass. At noon
some rain fell, and the day continued cloudy. About the middle of the
day Capt. Clarke's blackman's feet became so sore that he had to ride on
horseback. At 3 o'clock we came to a creek, [5] where there was fine
grass and we halted to let our horses eat. There are a great number of
fish in this creek. After we halted the weather became cloudy, and a
considerable quantity of rain fell. We therefore concluded to remain
where we were all night, having come this day 18 miles. Our hunters
killed a deer, and we caught 5 fish.
-------
As I pointed out in my original post on these matters, the article I
referred to was ahistorical. Hunting and gathering did not lend itself
to intensive agriculture. A society that could produce an agricultural
surplus was capable of overpowering one that was based on it. That is
the story of the empires of the Western hemisphere that gained hegemony:
the Aztecs, the Incas and the Mayans.
You can get a sense of the resentment some anthropologists feel toward
these rudimentary empires from reading Thomas Patterson's "Inventing
Western Civilization". Patterson is unstinting in his portrayal of the
Inca ruling elite. The quest for power consumes them. They are either
fighting with each other in wars of succession as characters in a
Shakespeare play do, or with outlying tribes who resist assimilation.
This unflattering portrait is a reaction, one must suppose, to the
tendency of "indigenists" to view Inca civilization as enlightened and
humane. It is one thing for an archaeologist to admire their artifacts,
but Patterson's sympathies are with the people who were under the thumb.
The odd thing about civilization is that it takes societies with
strictly defined divisions of labor to produce museum quality artifacts.
As Freud said, the purpose of civilization is repression. Such divisions
are inevitably the result of having somebody pointing a gun or spear at
you, either implicitly or explicitly.
_________________________________________________________
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at:
https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
