Renewal
Eparkhos
Well-known member
I've drifted back to this idea over the last couple days and done some more reading on it, particularly Ten Thousand Years of Cultivation at Kuk Swamp in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea and The Huon Gulf and its hinterlands: A long-term view of coastal-highlands interactions. My conclusions are thus:
- There were complex agricultural societies in the highlands of New Guinea, as well as long-distance trade and complex social interactions; however, there was no real development of states, with society instead being based on mutual reciprocity; essentially, agricultural groups with hunter-gatherer social structures.
This is good for the highlanders--generally, pre-state societies are more pleasant to live in than statist ones--but not good for the creation of a civilization-building timeline, as it's rather hard to have a civilization without organized states and all they entail (class structure, labor division, writing, organized religion, etc.,). If the historical status quo had all the building blocks for an organized society, but there was never a series of pressures that made it 'click', how are we to develop states? The scenario outlined below is, I believe, the most plausibile way of state-societies developing.
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From around 1500 BC onward, the tribes/villages of the Huon Peninsula engaged in hydraulic construction, building dams in the narrow valleys of the highlands. Strangely, these seem to have been purely status symbols, perhaps also serving as water storage centers during the dry seasons, and underwent regular cycles of construction and demolition as chiefs rose to power and then died. There is no sign of aquaculture or irrigation, which is, frankly, bizarre.
Sometime around 1000 BC, a group of interlopers--I'm thinking members of the Terminal Truncated Bird Pestle Culture displaced from the central highlands--arrive and conquer the Huon People, displacing the ruling elite and installing themselves in their place. The TTBPC people are familiar with the irrigation and drainage complexes of the Goroka Region and impose them upon the Huonites, transforming the primitive water-impound system into a network of dams, fish ponds, irrigation canals and drainage ditches, which causes a population explosion in the conquered regions. Though the two groups eventually blend together, is a strong class system in place, with infrastructure building seen as a sign of wealth and power; as population rises, proto-states form to maintain the hydraulic systems, clear land, fend off raids and keep the peasants in line. By ~300 BC, the highlands of the Huon Peninsula are home to the first organized states in New Guinea, their influence rapidly spreading...
Thoughts?
- There were complex agricultural societies in the highlands of New Guinea, as well as long-distance trade and complex social interactions; however, there was no real development of states, with society instead being based on mutual reciprocity; essentially, agricultural groups with hunter-gatherer social structures.
This is good for the highlanders--generally, pre-state societies are more pleasant to live in than statist ones--but not good for the creation of a civilization-building timeline, as it's rather hard to have a civilization without organized states and all they entail (class structure, labor division, writing, organized religion, etc.,). If the historical status quo had all the building blocks for an organized society, but there was never a series of pressures that made it 'click', how are we to develop states? The scenario outlined below is, I believe, the most plausibile way of state-societies developing.
---------
From around 1500 BC onward, the tribes/villages of the Huon Peninsula engaged in hydraulic construction, building dams in the narrow valleys of the highlands. Strangely, these seem to have been purely status symbols, perhaps also serving as water storage centers during the dry seasons, and underwent regular cycles of construction and demolition as chiefs rose to power and then died. There is no sign of aquaculture or irrigation, which is, frankly, bizarre.
Sometime around 1000 BC, a group of interlopers--I'm thinking members of the Terminal Truncated Bird Pestle Culture displaced from the central highlands--arrive and conquer the Huon People, displacing the ruling elite and installing themselves in their place. The TTBPC people are familiar with the irrigation and drainage complexes of the Goroka Region and impose them upon the Huonites, transforming the primitive water-impound system into a network of dams, fish ponds, irrigation canals and drainage ditches, which causes a population explosion in the conquered regions. Though the two groups eventually blend together, is a strong class system in place, with infrastructure building seen as a sign of wealth and power; as population rises, proto-states form to maintain the hydraulic systems, clear land, fend off raids and keep the peasants in line. By ~300 BC, the highlands of the Huon Peninsula are home to the first organized states in New Guinea, their influence rapidly spreading...
Thoughts?