As is my want when there are no real consequences of doing so I shoot off at the hip with a gross oversimplification to drive a home point. The point is valid, the argument tends toward misericordiam. So, shoot me.

For example…

I was a high school drop out who got a GED in the Air Force. After I got out I managed to get an Associates Degree from a community college. That would have pretty much been a waste except I was fortunate enough to get exposed to three things in the process:

1. Basic philosophy, including a general survey course of all the “great” philosophers and “great” ideas and a solid introduction to formal logic and exposure to the common (and perennial) fallacies.
2. A general survey course of ancient history from the late-neolithic period through the fall of Rome in the West.
3. An introduction to literature in the form of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Twain, Steinbeck, etc.

My actual education and degree got me nothing, actually, but those three things, which should be covered by middle school, equipped me to educate myself. An advanced degree is a badge that you are either a docile conformist or an amoral predator with expensive skills and entrenched connections.

Not that I’m a bitter old man or anything.

Much as the application in the context I delivered it may be misplaced, I realize those three point say something about my intellectual foundation, such as it is.

For some reason I feel compelled to expound a bit on item #2… A general survey course of ancient history from the late-neolithic period through the fall of Rome in the West.

I think it is important to have some historical perspective. Without it the events of one’s own day can seem overwhelming and there is no basis for forming judgments without the understanding that humans are slow to change and there is little we have not faced and adapted to before. It is only in the last century we have become technically capable of altering our environment on a massive scale–for good or ill–and reached the capability of wiping ourselves out in a matter of hours. But that’s for a different screed.

So, let’s begin with the Neolithic Revolution.

From The Wise Geek. . .

The Neolithic Revolution is the transformation of human societies from being hunter-gatherer based to agriculture based. This period, which occurred between 12,000 and 8,000 years ago, brought along many profound changes to human society and culture, including the creation of cities and permanent dwellings, labor specialization, the baking of bread and brewing of beer, personal property, more complex hierarchical social structures, non-agricultural crafts, slavery, the state, official marriage, personal inheritance, and more. The term “Neolithic revolution” refers both to the period of time when it occurred as well as the enduring changes it caused.

The Neolithic revolution first emerged in the Fertile Crescent, around present-day Iraq, which would also be the founding site of the world’s first large cities, including Babylon. Mankind was most active and prosperous around the Near and Middle East at this time. Some of the oldest known human settlements were founded in Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey just a couple thousand years after the conclusion of the Neolithic revolution.

Having followed a neopagan spiritual path for a few years I’ve had an idea or two about the paleo- and neolithic period, probably a bit biased by my natural (not political) feminism and a still active romantic streak. Should I ever revisit it I suspect I’d see things through a different prism. As it stands the best I could say is that prior to written language we still lack enough objective knowledge to more than speculate about social organization and culture beyond simple pattern recognition.

Whatever the cause, when humans learned to produce more than they consumed they acquired the luxury of time to devote to things other than basic survival. With the advent of writing we can actually know the content of human thought on something on more than a purely symbolic level. It also enables the external deposit of memory and experience where in the past only human memory and oral transmission could preserve the past and impart its wisdom. “The great benefit of writing systems is their ability to maintain a persistent record of information expressed in a language, which can be retrieved independently of the initial act of formulation.¹”

The earliest coherent system was Sumerian. It is from them, nearly six thousand years ago, that Western civilization ultimately derives.

In The Long Road West Frank Morley described the main organizing principle in society as the idea that the world belongs to God–or a god–and people exist as God’s slaves and priests, as God’s representatives became the first elite or noble class as they managed the excess production brought about by advances in agriculture. They soon joined in a symbiotic relationship with royalty to establish the state as representing divine order on Earth.

By the time of the Uruk period (ca. 4100 - 2900 BC), the volume of trade goods transported along the canals and rivers of southern Mesopotamia facilitated the rise of many large, stratified, temple-centered cities (with populations of over 10,000 people) where centralized administrations employed specialized workers. It is fairly certain that it was during the Uruk period that Sumerian cities began to make use of slave labor captured from the hill country, and there is ample evidence for captured slaves as workers in the earliest texts.

Stefan Molyneux argues that…

…in tribal times, human beings could only produce what they consumed — there was no excess production of food or other resources. Thus, there was no point owning slaves, because the slave could not produce any excess that could be stolen by the master.

If a horse pulling a plow can only produce enough additional food to feed the horse, there is no point hunting, capturing and breaking in a horse.

However, when agricultural improvements allowed for the creation of excess crops, suddenly it became highly advantageous to own human beings.

When cows began to provide excess milk and meat, owning cows became worthwhile.

The earliest governments and empires were in fact a ruling class of slave hunters, who understood that because human beings could produce more than they consumed, they were worth hunting, capturing, breaking in - and owning.

The earliest… empires were in reality human farms, where people were hunted, captured, domesticated and owned like any other form of livestock. Due to technological and methodological improvements, the slaves produced enough excess that the labor involved in capturing and keeping them represented only a small subset of their total productivity.

It is, perhaps, a bleak assessment, but one with great explanatory value for me.

Of course it is probably due to thirty or so years of perspective that allow me to be cynical enough to grasp the nation-state as a human farm. When first exposed to the sweep of ancient history I saw it as the playing out of heroic forces and the upward striving of humanity. A nearly Manichean struggle between progress and ignorance.

To be continued…

Just a little piece of something I’ve wanted to put together

The Merovingians

c.450 CE - 751

The Merovingians (also Merovings) were a Salian Frankish dynasty that came to rule the Franks in a region (known as Francia in Latin) largely corresponding to ancient Gaul from the middle of the fifth century. Their politics involved frequent civil warfare among branches of the family. During the final century of the Merovingian rule, the dynasty was increasingly pushed into a ceremonial role. The Merovingian rule was ended in 751 when Pepin the Short formally deposed Childeric III, beginning the Carolingian monarchy.

The Merovingian dynasty owes its name to the semi-legendary Merovech (Latinised as Meroveus or Merovius), leader of the Salian Franks, and emerges into wider history with the victories of his son Childeric I (reigned c.457 – 481) against the Visigoths, Saxons, and Alemanni. Childeric’s son Clovis I went on to unite most of Gaul north of the Loire under his control around 486, when he defeated Syagrius, the Roman ruler in those parts. He won the Battle of Tolbiac against the Alemanni in 496, at which time, according to Gregory of Tours, Clovis adopted his wife’s Nicene Christian faith. He subsequently went on to decisively defeat the Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse in the Battle of Vouillé in 507. After Clovis’ death, his kingdom was partitioned among his four sons, and over the next century this tradition of partition would continue. Even when several Merovingian kings simultaneously ruled their own realms, the kingdom — not unlike the late Roman Empire — was conceived of as a single entity ruled collectively by these several kings (in their own realms) among whom a turn of events could result in the reunification of the whole kingdom under a single ruler. Leadership among the early Merovingians was probably based on mythical descent and alleged divine patronage, expressed in terms of continued military success.

The Carolingians

751 - c. 900

The Carolingian dynasty (known variously as the Carlovingians, Carolings, or Karlings) was a Frankish noble family with its origins in the Arnulfing and Pippinid clans of the 7th century. The name “Carolingian”, Medieval Latin karolingi, an altered form of an unattested Old High German *karling, kerling (meaning “descendant of Charles”, cf. MHG kerlinc),[1] derives from the Latinised name of Charles Martel: Carolus.[2] The family consolidated its power in the late 7th century, eventually making the offices of mayor of the palace and dux et princeps Francorum hereditary and becoming the de facto rulers of the Franks as the real powers behind the throne. By 751, the Merovingian dynasty which until then had ruled the Franks by right was deprived of this right with the consent of the Papacy and the aristocracy and a Carolingian, Pepin the Short, was crowned King of the Franks.

The greatest Carolingian monarch was Charlemagne, who was crowned Emperor by Pope Leo III at Rome in 800. His empire, ostensibly a continuation of the Roman Empire, is referred to historiographically as the Carolingian Empire. The traditional Frankish (and Merovingian) practice of dividing inheritances among heirs was not given up by the Carolingian emperors, though the concept of the indivisibility of the Empire was also accepted. The Carolingians had the practice of making their sons (sub-)kings in the various regions (regna) of the Empire, regna which they would inherit on the death of their father. Following the death of Louis the Pious, the surviving adult Carolingians fought a three-year civil war ending only in the Treaty of Verdun, which divided the empire into three regna while according imperial status and a nominal lordship to Lothair I. The Carolingians differed markedly from the Merovingians in that they disallowed inheritance to illegitimate offspring, possibly in an effort to prevent infighting among heirs and assure a limit to the division of the realm. In the late ninth century, however, the lack of suitable adults among the Carolingians necessitated the rise of Arnulf of Carinthia, a bastard child of a legitimate Carolingian king.

The Carolingians were displaced in most of the regna of the Empire in 888. They ruled on in East Francia until 911 and they held the throne of West Francia intermittently until 987.

The sons of Louis the Pious, Charlemagne’s grandsons, fought a civil war after Louis’ death over their inheritance, which only ended in exhaustion. The Frankish lands were divided between them. Charles the Bald was given the western lands, “West Francia”, that would later become France. Louis the German received the eastern lands, which would become Germany. Lothair I was given the lands between the two, “Middle Francia” which consisted of Lotharingia, Provence, and northern Italy. Middle Francia was not united in any way, and in the next generation disintegrated into smaller lordships, with West Francia and East Francia fighting for control over them. Arguably, France and Germany continued to fight over these lands up until World War II.

As Thomas Paine points out, English government (the ancestor of ours) goes back to the Norman Conquest. William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy told the English people, “submit to my rule and pay my taxes or I will hurt you.” This is classic protection racketeering.

The people pointed out that while William and his Norman Knights were good, if all the people fought they could beat him. William answered this point with four distinct answers:

A. Not everyone would fight back, you may not be able to raise enough troops to beat me. Even if you
do you will wear yourself out and then the Norse, Scots, and Irish will have their way with you. I’m bad, without me you will be stuck with a worse mess.

B. I’ll protect you from the Norse, Scots, and Irish, and local bandits. So submitting will not only keep me from hurting you, it really is buying protection.

C. OK, I’ll also provide you with roads,courts of justice, and reasonably just laws. As time passes my successors will find other ways to reinvest the extortion (I mean tax money) you are paying to increase your productivity (I mean make your lives more prosperous and pleasant).

D. In conclusion pay up and I won’t hurt you and it’s cheaper to pay than fight anyhow. I will also protect you from your enemies and toss you some goodies.

The people of England agreed and William changed his sobriquet and title to the Conqueror, King of England.

About 940 years later in America…