▶ social organization
introduction
Th e topic of social organization speaks in many ways of why
people study ancient history. It speaks of the vast possibilities
of the human imagination, revealing that there have been and
still are many solutions to the problems human beings have
faced over their existence. Some solutions have been success-
ful, helping cultures survive for hundreds or thousands of
years, while other solutions have been unsuccessful, resulting
in the decline and extinctions of some cultures.
Th e sheer variety of social organizations is in itself an at-
traction to modern readers, but there are practical reason for
looking at ancient ways societies organized themselves. One
reason is highly personal, belonging to each individual stu-
dent of ancient life: Ancient social organizations can help tell
people why they are here and why they are living as they are.
Ma ny problems t he i nd iv idu a l person faces i n moder n societ y
are not new. For instance, when a modern Western woman
wonders why she faces social barriers in the business world,
she may wonder about the truth of the common notion that
her biology has fated her to a diffi cult career. She need only
study the ways of ancient Sumer to see that a society in which
women could have equal opportunities with men is possible,
because it has existed. Further, she can discover how civiliza-
tions evolved to restrict her opportunities. Knowing why she
is where she is can be spiritually liberating—reason enough
to study ancient social organizations. Beyond that, there may
be clues to why the culture of Mesopotamia changed from
one where women were social equals with or even superior to
men to one in which women were treated as less than human,
as in the Neo-Assyrian culture. From that understanding can
come ideas for solutions to her modern diffi culties, because
she will have learned that society changes and that creative
minds can be the agents of change.
When human societies began to form, they were almost
certainly kinship groups, composed of parents, their chil-
dren, siblings, and cousins. Even within such close groups,
there had to be rules of conduct. For instance, the young had
to learn to be respectful of their elders for the very good rea-
son that they would die without their parents’ knowledge of
how to survive. Th e larger social organizations that emerged
with larger groups of people probably had that imperative:
survival. In ever-larger social groups there are greater oppor-
tunities for the young to learn from their elders and a better
chance of being cared for if sick or injured. Still, larger social
groups mean more chances for confl ict among people. Many
ancient social organizations were created in part to fi nd ways
in which people could conduct their lives without harming or
being harmed by others in their groups.
With the development of agriculture, the need for social
rules that were organized in a manner that most people could
understand became more important. Agriculture gave human
beings an enormously greater opportunity to survive child-
hood by making the food supply more reliable and regularthan it had been previously. Th e chances for survival increased
even more if people found ways to manage their harvests so
that they could eat well during seasons when food would nor-
mally be scarce, and those chances could increase further if
they found a way to manage their harvests so that they did not
starve during years of drought or other disasters that caused
poor harvests. Such management of harvests required pro-
gressively more complex rules for storage and distribution of
food. Some societies became very successful at management
of food supplies. For instance, Egypt’s granaries kept its peo-
ple fed through lean times as well as fat times for thousands
of years. Cultures that mismanaged food or kept food supplies
to a small minority of elites faced uprisings, as China did, or
collapse of their economies, as the ancient Maya did.
It is perhaps part of human nature that people, whatever
their stations in their societies, wish to share in the benefi ts
of their cultures. Good clothes, good food, and good school-
ing seem to be desired in almost any culture, yet rarely are
there enough supplies of anything that everyone can share
in. To deal with the problem, cultures have devised various
solutions. In many cultures outright repression holds society
together, with those in charge of the armies controlling the
benefi ts of society. In others, it is religion. In ancient India
religious doctrine developed in such detail that every person
could know what he of she was supposed to do throughout
life. Who shared in which benefi ts was determined by birth
and explained by a doctrine that held that people were born
into certain social groups because of the good and evil they
had done in previous lives. Th e hope for a better life lay in
fulfi lling one’s duties in the present life, providing motivation
for one to contribute to society in the role allotted. Th e notion
of being able to improve one’s life has been a safety valve for
many cultures.
When reading about social organization, look for how
rigid the organization was as well as for the ways in which it
was fl exible. Th is requires thought, because a culture might,
in theory, have very strict rules for organization but, like an-
cient India, be somewhat fl exible in how the rules were actu-
ally applied. Th en, too, look at how much a society allowed
for social mobility. Even for someone who had no realistic
chance of improving his or her life, just having the possibil-
ity for improvement could be a powerful motivator, one that
could encourage people to be industrious and faithful to the
organization of their society because the organization gave
them hope. It can be enlightening to see how cultures with
long histories, such as ancient Egypt and China, organized
and reorganized themselves to cope with changes in environ-
ment, technology, and their neighbors. Perhaps some of what
they did still has value for the modern age.AFRICA
BY LEAH A. J. COHEN
Many factors contributed to the forms of social organiza-
tion in ancient Africa, including environmental and cli-1010 social organization: introduction0895-1194_Soc&Culturev4(s-z).i1010 1010 10/10/07 2:30:45 PM