Page 85 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

this fleeting world / acceleration: the agrarian era tfw-25

The agrarian era was marked by more
permanent settlements and accompanying
graveyards. This photo is of the remains of a
stone burial mound in Scotland.

their children. Where monumental structures appeared,
such as the statues on Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean
or giant stone circles such as Stonehenge in Britain, we
can be certain that leaders existed with enough power to
organize and coordinate the labor of hundreds or thou-
sands of persons.

Early Glass Ceiling Leaders and Leadership
Gender hierarchies may have been among the earliest Hierarchies of power shaped many other relationships as
forms of institutionalized hierarchies. As members of local communities were drawn into wider networks of
households established more complex relationships with exchange. In these larger networks traditional kinship
outsiders, they came under the influence of new rules, thinking no longer worked. Genealogies began to take on
structures, and expectations. An emerging division of semifictional forms that allowed entire communities to
labor also created new opportunities outside the house- claim descent from the same, often mythical ancestor.
hold and the village.Yet, in a world where the economic Such genealogies could generate new forms of hierarchy
and social success of each household depended on bear- by ranking descent groups according to their exact rela-
ing and rearing as many children as possible, women usu- tionship to the founder. Where descendants of senior
ally had fewer opportunities to take on more specialized lines claimed higher status, aristocracies began to appear.
roles—some of which brought great wealth and power. However, when people chose leaders, ability usually
The linguist and archaeologist Elizabeth Barber has counted for as much as birth. Where high-born people
argued that this fact may explain why men were more lacked leadership skills, persons with more talent as con-
likely to occupy high-ranking positions in emerging hier- ciliators, warriors, or mediators with the gods were cho-
archies.Warfare may also have changed gender relations sen to support or replace them. Most simple forms of
as population growth intensified competition between leadership derived from the needs of the community;
communities and as men began to monopolize the thus, they depended largely on popular consent.This con-
organization of violence. sent made early power structures fragile because the
Whatever the cause, the disproportionate presence of power of leaders could evaporate all too easily if they
men in external power structures reshaped relations and failed in the tasks for which they were chosen.
attitudes within the village and the household. Men However, as communities expanded, the resources
began to claim a natural superiority based on their role available to their leaders increased until leaders began to
in emerging power structures outside the household, set aside a share of those resources to support specialist
and women were increasingly defined by their role within enforcers or rudimentary armies. In this way leaders
the household and their relationships to men. Even the whose power originated in the collective needs of their
many women who earned money outside the household subjects eventually acquired the ability to coerce at least
usually did so in jobs associated with the tasks of the some of those they ruled and to back up the collection of
household. Within the household the demands of peas- resources and the control of labor with the threat of force.
ant life ensured that men and women continued to work The details of such processes are largely hidden from us,
in partnership. At this intimate, domestic scale relation- although archaeological evidence and anthropological
ships owed as much to personal qualities as to gender. research can give us many hints of how some of these
However, beyond the household the powerful web of cul- processes played out in particular communities. These
tural expectations and power relations now known as processes prepared the way for the more powerful polit-
“patriarchy” emerged. ical structures that we know as“states.” States appeared in