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The History of Primitive Society

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p The history of the human race covers the whole period since man first appeared on the earth, roughly estimated at a million years. In the earliest period of human history there existed neither separate peoples nor states and men lived in small groups, clans or tribes. This period is known as the epoch of primitive society.

p Archaeologists divided the history of mankind into three ages according to the material from which human implements were made: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.

However, these divisions proved inadequate, particularly with regard to the earliest periods of primitive society, some of which lasted for many thousands of years. For this reason new subdivisions were added. The Stone Age was divided into Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age), Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) and Neolithic (New Stone Age). In addition, the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods were divided into Lower, Middle and Upper.

Primitive Man

p If we turn now not to archaeological but geological classifications, we find that man first appeared on this planet at the beginning of the so-called Quaternary period, when the ice-sheets then covering the whole of northern Asia, Europe and America started to recede and a warm climate emerged in those areas.

p The type of man who appeared at that period possessed few characteristics distinguishing him from the animal kingdom. For example, at that time people, like monkeys, lived in trees, had no fixed dwelling place, and did not wear any form of clothes. However, the decisive difference was already there, namely, that man, unlike animals, had already learnt to make tools. Initially 12 these tools were of an exceedingly primitive kind. The most primitive type of stone implement made by man was known as the pebble tool; it consisted of a piece of stone, crudely fashioned with a slightly sharpened edge usually weighing approximately five pounds. Man used this primitive tool both as a means of defence or attack and as a work implement.

p During that distant epoch man found his sustenance mainly by gathering whatever food nature happened to provide, such as fruits and berries, and by hunting small animals. Since people at that time were to a large extent helpless before the forces of nature, they were obliged to live, work and defend themselves in groups.

p As a result there came into being groupings of primitive men, the level of whose communal development was so low that they were classified as "primitive human herds”. These primitive herds were completely lacking in any concept of hierarchy or inequality. Neither did there exist any idea of property or family ties.

p Anyone who held aloof from the herd was looked upon as a stranger, which at that time was the equivalent of an enemy. This was the main reason why people strove to stay together: life outside the herd was fraught with danger and beyond the powers of any separate individual.

p At the end of the Lower Palaeolithic there occurred a new (third) glaciation. Tundra-type climatic conditions developed over wide areas of Asia and Europe. Many animals were unable to survive such a sharp change of climate and became extinct. Meanwhile man succeeded in adapting himself to the new conditions. During the Lower Palaeolithic he had learnt to make fire, which he had already known how to use and preserve. The use of fire enabled him to protect himself from the cold and from wild animals and to cook his food (hitherto he had known only raw food). The art of making fire represented man’s first major victory over nature.

p It was during this epoch that the gradual transformation of the primitive human herd into a community of a more advanced type took place. The whole structure and pattern of life was changing. Man came down to earth from the trees. However he still did not build dwellings and made use of natural shelters, mainly caves. Techniques used for fashioning stone implements also changed. It was during this period that smaller and finer tools—the socalled core and flake tools—made their appearance.

p The main occupation of man at this period of his development was hunting for large animals, such as deer or mammoths. This did not mean, however, that man had ceased to be a gatherer, but merely that hunting had replaced gathering as the most important method of obtaining food.

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p It was between the fortieth and twelfth millennia B.C. (the Upper Palaeolithic) that modern man evolved. It was also during this period that the first racial differences appeared.

p There are theories which maintain that races have always existed, that is ever since man evolved as a species distinct from the rest of the animal kingdom. The supporters of such theories consider that certain races are naturally superior, whereas others
Tools of the Sinanthropus
possess specific deficiencies and are therefore inferior. However such an argument is completely spurious. In the first place racial distinctions did not evolve at the very beginning of the existence of the human race but only at a given stage of human development. Secondly, the most painstaking and impartial analysis will reveal that there are no fundamental differences between the various races and that the only distinctions are purely external, physical ones (such as skin colour, type of hair, etc.).

These were the main changes which took place in human society during the Palaeolithic period. The primitive herd ceased to exist and a new form of social life—the clan community— came into being.

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The Era of the Clan

p The original principle underlying this type of social structure was female kinship. This is explained by the fact that group marriages were the common practice, as a result of which children never knew who their fathers were, only their mothers. Thus kinship was exclusively matrilineal.

Society based on this matriarchal pattern lasted for several thousand years. This type of society coincided roughly with the Mesolithic and the Lower Neolithic periods and represented an important stage in the development of mankind. It was during this period that man exchanged his crude stone weapons for vastly superior ones, such as the bow and arrow, and started to tame animals. The first animal to be tamed appears to have been the dog. People also learnt at this period to make clay vessels, an indication of the fact that they had begun to cook their food systematically. During the Upper Neolithic period new techniques for working stone evolved: boring, filing and polishing. Last but by no means least, it was during this period that primitive forms of land cultivation and animal husbandry made their appearance.

The Development of Agriculture and Stockbreeding

p Cultivation of the land was a logical continuation of earlier food gathering. As they gathered nuts, fruits, acorns and grain men gradually noticed that the grain started to grow after it had fallen on the ground. However, many centuries were to elapse before man concluded from these observations that he could plant grain himself and grow plants from it. It was in this way that primitive agriculture began.

p The tools first used for agriculture were extremely primitive, such as digging sticks and later hoes. The crops produced were barley, wheat, millet, peas, and vegetables such as carrots.

p The domestication of food animals developed from hunting practices. By this period men had learnt to hunt by “rounding up" their prey. Large groups of men would “round up" wild boar or oxen, and hunting became a collective activity on a mass scale. Gradually man realised that it was possible to make use of animals, to tame and breed them. Such were the primitive beginnings of Stockbreeding.

p The subsequent development of agriculture and Stockbreeding is closely linked with the transition from matrilineal to patrilineal kinship. Agriculture and Stockbreeding became spheres in which the man gradually ousted the woman. This step in its turn was bound up with the invention of the plough and the transition from agriculture based on hoeing, to that based on ploughing. Ploughing being a more strenuous activity, was done by men with 15 the aid of draught beasts. Woman was then allotted the new role of managing the domestic tasks.

p The establishment of patrilineal kinship, or patriarchy, marked a new stage in the development of human society. It was in this period that the important transition from stone tools to metal ones took place. First of all men learnt to smelt copper, but since copper is a very soft metal they soon began to fuse it with tin thus making bronze. Bronze is much harder than copper, melts at a lower temperature and is more malleable. Thus it proved highly suitable for tools and weapons.

p The development of agriculture and animal husbandry and the transition to metal tools led to tribes gradually specialising in either tillage or herding. The cultivators spread to various parts of the Western hemisphere and in the Eastern hemisphere they were mostly to be found in the valleys of large rivers such as the Nile in Egypt, the Tigris and the Euphrates in Mesopotamia, the Indus in India, the Hwang Ho in China and also in parts of Asia Minor and the Balkan peninsula. The pastoralists settled mainly in Southern Siberia, the basin of the Aral Sea, the Iranian plateau and the southern steppes bordering on the Black Sea.

p A regular exchange of produce grew up between the cultivators and the pastoralists. Whereas in earlier times people had tried to produce enough to support their particular family or clan, they now started trying to produce a surplus because of the possibility of barter. There now existed an incentive to accumulate surplus produce within a given tribe, clan or family.

The urge to accumulate surplus produce for barter engendered a new attitude to prisoners captured in inter-tribal warfare. Whereas earlier these prisoners had usually been killed or absorbed into the ranks of the winning tribe, a new custom now grew up, that of taking prisoners and forcing them to work for their conquerors, thus turning them into slaves. In this way during the patriarchal era primitive or patriarchal slavery came into being. The appearance of slavery was one of the first signs of the disintegration of the primitive community.

The Disintegration of the Clan Structure

p It was in the fourteenth century B.C. that the transition to iron tools began, first of all in Asia Minor. Iron ploughs, axes and spades make their appearance. The use of iron brought about a fundamental revolution in agricultural techniques and craftsmanship. Ironsmiths appeared, followed by the invention of the potter’s wheel and the weaving loom. A further division of labour took place when craftsmen ceased to work on the land and cultivators no longer spent part of their time fashioning metal and clay.

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p One of the most important events of this epoch was the introduction of private property. The first private possessions were cattle and slaves, i.e., enslaved prisoners. Gradually land became an additional form of private property, one of the most important since it represented the source of all means of subsistence, and then tools for cultivating it as well. Inequality based on property relations also resulted from this and side by side with the categories of free men and slaves there emerged the new categories of rich and poor. Soon certain families or persons owned the best plots of land or the largest herds of cattle, while other families grew poorer and were ruined. Within the various clans a type of nobility became discernible, namely those who possessed riches and power. From among this nobility tribal leaders emerged and members of the council of elders.

Family ties started to play a less important part at this stage in the development of human society, being gradually replaced by links based on spatial proximity, i.e., links between people inhabiting the same area. Territorial communities sprang up at the time when the clan-based community was in the process of disintegration. They continued to exist for many centuries and were still to be found in some places right up to the beginning of the twentieth century, as in India and pre-revolutionary Russia.

The Origin of Classes and States

p The development of man’s technical equipment, the appearance of private property and finally the spread of slavery gradually led to the division of society into large groups occupying different social positions. There were those who owned land^ tools and slaves but did no work themselves, and those who supported themselves by their own labour—either those who owned their implements of labour (peasants and craftsmen) or those who did not own anything and were obliged to work for their masters as slaves. These large groups occupying such widely divergent social positions came to be known as classes.

p The class which owned riches and compelled others (slaves, peasants and craftsmen) to work for it started striving to hold them in subjection. To this end a new institution evolved, which was quite unknown in social communities based on principles of kinship, and which we refer to as the state. Various organs of power such as prisons, army and courts of justice were all component parts of the state apparatus.

From the moment of the division of society into classes and the emergence of the state a new era began in the history of mankind. So let us now turn from a general outline of the history of ancient man to a more detailed exposition of the history of individual states and peoples.