“It is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past.” [Arendt, 1963]
Chiefdoms appear around 5,500 [1] in the Middle East. The social structure on which they are organized is the clan and the extended family, developed to palliate the economic difficulties to which the populations were confronted at the end of the Neolithic era. The emplacement of the site of Hassuna (Iraq) shows the important role economic diversification plays at the beginning of the Chalcolithic. This village is located at the crossroad of the arable land of the Assyrian plain, irrigated by tributaries of the Tigris, and the more arid grazing zones of Al Jazireh. This situation highlights the mixed strategies of the communal economy, allowing specialized horticulture (culture of the olive, for example), as well as breeding, of which secondary products such as milk and leather are now used.
Diversification of production entails an increasingly composite economic management. Each clan will be obliged to have enough members to represent it in the different zones of activity of the community. Because of the complexities brought by economic diversification and demographic development, and the necessity to organize public works, the chief will have to be endowed with powers that will enable him to take decisions in behalf of the whole community. Such a centralized authority will be especially necessary to the construction and maintenance of irrigation systems that will require the cooperation of several villages. To ensure the future of their community, the clans will agree to limit their powers and sacrifice some of their liberties accordingly, giving birth to the hierarchies that will structure the chiefdoms.
The egalitarianism that characterized social organization and relationships until then did not disappear overnight, maintaining, at the beginning, the powers of the chief within acceptable limits.
In the traditional tribal organization, the chief was chosen for his capacities [3]. The exercise of his function did not give him any privilege that would have manifestly distinguished him from other members of the community, whether through possessions or through exemption from communal activity. The restricted size of the communities, the weight of the traditions, and internal competition limited any abuse, eventually bringing back any excess to a more balanced equilibrium [4]. Besides, the chief was not an authority imposed on the community, but was rather seen as a personage capable of balancing the different poles of interests, without losing sight of the traditions and the well-being of the community. In the highlands of New Guinea, Jared Diamond observed village meetings in which all adults participated, and was astonished by the fact that no one seemed to preside over those meetings, everyone being able to speak freely [5].
With chiefdoms, the first elements of social inequality appear. The chief is exempt from work, albeit sometimes only partially, and he accumulates possessions, clearly differentiating himself and the members of his family. He accentuates these differences by wearing and using distinctive signs: clothes, ornaments, headdress, accessories (jewelry, feathers, crown, throne, etc.) To mark the difference in status, some chiefs adopted an exclusive reverential code that varied greatly from one place to another: whereas some asked that one slightly bowed before them, others required from their people to lie face down on the ground, transforming a mark of respect into a sign of submission. The chief's status is frequently indicated by his physical elevation, being transported on a shield as the Gaul practiced, on a litter such as Inca and Aztec emperors did, or being seated on an elevated throne. The language used to address him was often distinct from the common language [6].
Another important change is that his function was not assigned according to individual qualities anymore, but had become hereditary. One of the first occurrences attesting to this inherited transmission is a child's tomb discovered at Tell es Sawwan (Iraq) containing statuettes, turquoise, and decorations, a wealth showing that this child acquired a different status at birth.
As in the past, the chief is called to solve litigations occurring between members of the community. But as the village where everybody knows everybody gets bigger and its population becomes more multi-faceted, his role as a mediator gradually turns into that of a judge, which will result in the emergence of codes of law during the third and the second millennium.
Generally, his main task is to organize and manage the different facets of a diversified economy. His status is directly associated with the way production is distributed, and land is assigned. Describing the family of a chief from the island of Naroi (Fiji), Marshall Sahlins noted that it was more than double all other families in the village, allowing the chief to produce, accumulate and distribute like a chief.
Demographic growth played a crucial role in strengthening the chief’s authority, since chiefdoms allowed the integration of strangers into the social fabric, forming this way a population of several thousand, and even tens of thousands of individuals. A population growth of this magnitude multiplied the hierarchical layers, increasing the distance between the people and the authority. It also conferred a more important role to the distributive economy, if only because the income at the top increased as production grew. The redistribution of the production, controllable and transparent when the community was restricted, became opaque and prone to abuses, from the simplest form of corruption to kleptocracy.
Another important development that will build up the structure of power is the social integration of the different castes of specialists. A consequence of economic diversification and differentiation, the castes of bureaucrats and of soldiers will fortify and maintain the power in the hands of authority. The constitution of an army will open the door to conquests, profoundly marking our history, from the formation of the first kingdom by Lugal-Zage-Si until today. Furthermore, two other castes will play a major role in the nascent society: the priests and the slaves.
Finally, demographic growth will transform the way information is distributed, reinforcing the authority that controls it. Whereas in tribal communities, all information is shared, the size of the chiefdoms makes its redistribution more problematic. Adapted to the new structure, information is now concentrated at the summit of the hierarchy, and is only redistributed to members of the community to whom this information is deemed necessary. Controlling the information will become an important tool in the exercise of power [8].
Although few traces of the far-reaching transformations that sweep the Chalcolithic have been recovered, their results remain, however, visible in the organization, structure and norms of the kingdoms and empires that appear at the end of the third millennium.
It is, first of all, in the economic domain that the deepest changes occur. While women largely dominated the economy during the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras, the introduction of the plow and of plow animals into agriculture, allowing a larger population to be fed, relegated women to domestic horticultural production. Besides, the domestication of horses not only bestowed on men the means to control transportation, but also gave them an extraordinary instrument of conquest.
Furthermore, the big castes of specialists – bureaucrats, artisans, soldiers and priests – around which most activities of the city were organized were only comprised of men, while the economic contribution of women, however active they were in most businesses, became marginal. In fact, men ended controlling all domains of production and administration, aspects that characterize the Urban Revolution: the keys of power were in their hands and have remained there until today.
The Chalcolithic sees a complete reversal of the economic and social position of men and women: the primordial function and status that women possessed have passed in the hands of men who now dominate the new society, defining its norms and structures.
To comprehend fully how such a shift in the mentalities could take place, it is important to realize how the discovery of paternity was understood and integrated in the context of the time. As we have seen, building the idea of fatherhood has followed a slow process that was accompanied with a parallel deconstruction of the myths surrounding motherhood. But while man’s biologic role was becoming relatively clear, woman's contribution remained totally misunderstood. In fact, the new procreative equation was inspired by agriculture, its processes being simply applied to procreation.
In the agricultural world, two elements dominate: the seed that determines the plant that will germinate, and the soil that receives the seed and ensures its growth by feeding it. Transposed into procreative terms, the seeds of the male element are introduced in the female body whose task is to nurture them and make them grow: “By the sacred tradition the woman is declared to be the soil, the man is declared to be the seed; the production of all corporeal beings (takes place) through the union of the soil with the seed.” [Laws of Manu] According to the new insight, the seed of the man determines the features of the child to be born, whereas the woman is the soil feeding it. The fact that this nursing role can be performed by any woman transforms her, in man's eyes as in her own [9], into a secondary, replaceable element that wields no influence at all on the child she carries – the soil not determining in any way what will grow, only how it will grow. A few millennia later, Aeschylus voiced this standpoint on procreation in the following terms: “The mother of her so-called child is not parent, but nurse of the young life sown in her. The male is parent: she, but a stranger to him, keeps safe his growing plant, unless fate blight it.” [Aeschylus, 1920] This stance will dominate the way humans understand procreation until the discovery of the ovum by Karl Ernst von Baer in 1827 CE.
The new procreative roles will exert a considerable influence on the way humans perceive their function in nature: man has now become “creator,” whereas woman only exists to serve him. As we will see in the last part of this book, this principle will be affirmed and magnified by most philosophies and religions of the Axial Age.