CENTRAL AND NORTHERN ASIA
Most of what has been recorded about the peoples of central
and northern Asia was written by people who hated them.
Historical records are of raids by central and northern Asians
on farms and towns, of rampant slaughter of civilians and
theft of a year’s harvest as well as of valuable goods. How-
ever, the people of those parts of Asia were among the world’s
greatest explorers. Several times they crossed from Asia to
North America, and their descendants populated two un-
familiar continents. Many in the far north of Asia followed
nomadic animal herds, as some still follow reindeer. Th ere
is little record of these far northern Asians being warlike or
raiding others. Th ey seem to have had their societies orga-
nized around the herds they followed, which were regarded
as owned by everyone in the society.
Th ose who raided the settled peoples of Asia had ethics
so diff erent from those of the settled areas that their points of
view seemed almost incomprehensible to the settled peoples.
In general, such groups as the Xiongnu, who lived north and
northwest of China, regarded other peoples as prey. Th eir
societies were organized around taking what they needed to
survive, either from herds of sheep or cattle or from people
who grew crops and manufactured goods they wanted. Ef-
forts to reason with them by the Chinese and Indians failed
for lack of a common ground of understanding.
Th e Xiongnu had kings, men selected from among many
tribal chiefs. Th eir authority was limited because chiefs would
sometimes choose to disobey them. Both men and women
were trained from birth to be expert horsemen, and both gen-
ders held responsibility for carrying and raising tents, pro-
viding food, and defending their camps. Within a traveling
group, there seems to have been social ranking, with some
people owning more cattle or horses than other people. One
way for someone to raise his or her social standing was to
steal horses or cattle from another tribe.
Some nomads of central Asia moved into settled territo-
ries in order to fi nd pasture for their herds. Central Asia had
been drying out for centuries when Aryans moved into India
and Iran to fi nd new grazing areas. A growth in population
may have provided additional pressure to move south into
new lands. Th e best records of their societies known to exist
are the Hindu religious works the Vedas, based on the ancient
oral history of the Aryan invasion of India.OCEANIA
Very little is known of the social organization of ancient
Oceania. Th us, archaeologists and historians study the cus-
toms of people of Oceania of recorded history, from the 18th
century c.e. to the present, and make inferences about social
behavior. Sometimes they make assumptions about social or-
ganization that lack scientifi c foundation, based on what they
know of similar societies in other parts of the world. Th us,
much that is thought to be true of ancient Oceania is subject
to sometimes radical change when new evidence is discov-ered. In general, the peoples of the ancient Pacifi c probably
o r g a n i z e d t h e m s e l v e s b y f a m i l y r e l a t i o n s h i p s , w i t h i m m e d i a t e
relatives being the smallest social unit, followed by member-
ship in a clan. Th e peoples of Tonga may have been organizing
themselves into a larger social unit, a nation, during the last
couple of centuries of the ancient era, when they were likely
moving toward creating a monarchy and a kingdom. In Aus-
tralia people probably moved across the landscape in family
groups, forming larger groups only for religious observances.
Elsewhere the social dynamics are murky. For instance, Indo-
nesia almost certainly had cultures in which loyalty to one’s
clan was being replaced by loyalty to a monarch, but what
form this change took is unknown. During the medieval era
powerful kingdoms emerged on Java, suggesting that society
was already organized and developing as distinct groups or
nations earlier, during the ancient era.EUROPE
BY AMY HACKNEY BLACKWELL
Although social organization is very diffi cult to determine
from nonwritten sources, archaeologists use information
from settlements and burials to infer how the ancient people
of Europe structured their social relationships. Th e ice age
hunter-gatherers before 10,000 b.c.e. were organized into
bands that had only a loose connection to kinship and were
based more on friendship and trust. Such groups may have
coalesced at some times of the year and split apart at other
times to take advantage of seasonal conditions for hunting
and collecting. It is diffi cult to tell whether the family was a
centra l element of socia l life at t his time. Th e establishment of
farming communities across Europe between 7000 b.c.e. and
3000 b.c.e. brought the emergence of distinct households,
residential groups related by kinship and probably organized
in a family structure. Such households were the basic build-
ing blocks of Neolithic society. Diff erences in status, power,
and wealth were transient, and no lasting hierarchies appear
to have formed.
Social structure changed in the late Neolithic and the
Bronze Age, when we see for the fi rst time clear diff erences
in status, power, and wealth that persisted across generations.
Farming households were still the fundamental basis for so-
cia l st r ucture, but sta r t ing in about 30 0 0 b.c.e. in sout heastern
Europe and 2000 b.c.e. in northwestern Europe, there began
to be rich burials and the accumulation of goods that marked
social diff erences. Many archaeologists believe that the soci-
eties at this time took the form of what anthropologists call
“chiefdoms,” in which a small group of elite individuals and
families were in control of a larger population of commoners.
On the other hand, it is also possible that the lines of author-
ity and status were not so hierarchical at fi rst, and while some
individuals may have been leaders in some spheres of activity
(such as trade), others may have had leading roles in other ac-
tivities (such as warfare and ritual). It is clear, however, that the
complex social organization of Celtic and Germanic Europesocial organization: Europe 10270895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1027 1027 10/10/07 2:30:48 PM