In terms of the Neolithic and Bronze Age categorizations, we will use Neolithic to refer to the craft-oriented agri-cultures, while we will use Bronze Age to refer to the military overlay of the nomadic or forest cultures on top of the indigenous agri-cultures. For the nit pickers let it be stressed that the military overlay occurred without bronze and many Neolithic cultures used bronze for ornamentation without the military overlay. Just as the agricultural Neolithic could exist without pottery so could the military Bronze Age exist without bronze crafts or tools. This was especially true of the Bronze Age Shang dynasty of China, as we shall see.
Thus for the purposes of this paper, when we talk about the Bronze Age mentality, we are talking about the dominator mentality associated with the military aristocracy, personified as the warrior king. When we refer to a Neolithic mentality, we are referring to the agricultural arts and crafts orientation, associated with cultivation.
Because the peoples of the world arrived at these types of cultural transitions at different times, these ages cannot be given any specific dates. Hence Bronze Age Europe is different from Bronze Age China or Bronze Age England. In general the Neolithic Age of a culture would be peaceful and craft oriented, with or without metals, while the Bronze Age of a culture would be when a military aristocracy is overlaid on top of the agricultural society, with or without metals.
Remember that the Bronze Age centralized civilizations were based upon a settled military aristocracy rather than the nomadic military culture of the preceding age. Hence the agri-cultures were a necessary ingredient to the Bronze Age. It was the labor of these agri-cultures that yielded the fabulous wealth of the Bronze Age dictatorships. It is becoming easy to see why Indo-China with their bronze technology did not really belong to the cultural Bronze Age.
The Iron Age was just a continuation of the Bronze Age socially with a more sophisticated technology. Therefore it would be sufficient to call this age of the military aristocracy the Age of Metals rather than the Bronze Age. Hence just as the Neolithic didnÕt need pottery and crafts for their agriculture but normally contained them, the Metal Age didnÕt need metals to dominate, but normally did.
Sometimes instead of Bronze Age we will refer to the Metal Age. In the context of this paper, the terms are interchangeable. Probably we could more accurately represent the Neolithic Age as the Age of Farming, while the Bronze Age could more accurately be called the Age of the Military Aristocracy.
While Stone Age hunter-gatherer societies still exist, by and large the Bronze Age military aristocracy has been a universal in world history with individual variations. Wherever wealth exists the military follows. Hence any advanced Neolithic society based upon extensive trade would be inevitably conquered by a Bronze Age culture.
Let us redefine the cultural ages to make them homotaxial. Here we are speaking of cultural technology – the techniques of social organization. We start with the Tribal cultures based upon hunting and gathering. We continue with geographical differentiation, which includes agriculture, herding and hunter cultures. Then comes military aristocracy overlaid upon a peasant worker base. This sequence is homotaxial globally.
Sometimes the isolated hunter-gatherer cultures remain untouched for millennia, but as soon as they have something that the Bronze Age cultures want they are immediately assimilated into modern times, usually by force. This is what is happening to the isolated Indians of South and Central America presently. Oil and other precious resources have been found in their forests. Rather than negotiating with these ŌsavagesÕ we vilify them first. This is the Modern Bronze Age. The public must approve. After turning them into Communist guerrillas, we send the army in and seize their land, ŌlegallyÕ. Welcome to the Bronze Age, 1990s.
Let it be re-stressed that while certain technologies are homotaxial, always occurring in a set sequence, the cultural ages are not. Many times the Ages are presented sequentially as if each subsequent Age is an evolutionary step, i.e. the more advanced agricultural society follows the more primitive hunter gatherer societies. This tendency to view these ages as stages is especially pronounced with the transition between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age.
WeÕve already seen that hunting and herding were the appropriate cultural responses for certain geographies. Furthermore we will see that certain of these cultures existed at a similar level of sophistication to the agricultural societies. Each type of culture developed separately and simultaneously, rather than sequentially. The paradigm of thought, which views the Ages as stages of growth, breaks down when faced with an environment hostile to the agriculture stage.
Indeed, as weÕve suggested before, each type of culture is more associated with geography than it is with a stage. Most of the times an agricultural society emerges from a hunter-gatherer society. This occurs because they are located in a fertile agricultural zone, which lends itself to the domestication of plants and animals. This was the case in China as well as the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East. Also many times nomadic cultures emerge from hunter-gatherer societies, this is because they are located in grass lands, ideal for the herding of grazing animals. This was true of the Kurgan and Mongolian cultures. Many times, however, the hunter gatherer societies can evolve sophisticated cultures, when they are faced geographically with vast forests, ideally suited for hunting and gathering. This was true of the Northwest American Indians as well as the totemic Siberian forest culture.
The common presentation is that the Neolithic agricultural communities evolved into the centralized Bronze Age kingdoms. The reality is that the violent cultural clash between the Stratified Herder and Hunter cultures and the Egalitarian agricultural communities led to the relative enslavement of the agricultural people by the military cultures of the hunting and herding cultures. This was accompanied by the establishment of a military aristocracy.
The Bronze Age was characterized by the establishment of military aristocracies all over the Eurasiafrican landmass. While the agricultural societies tended to be craft-oriented and egalitarian, these Bronze Age societies tended to be war-oriented and hierarchical, with the strong war-like man at the top of the pyramid.
While the Neolithic societies were based upon many small interactive communities, the Bronze Age societies were heavily centralized with a man-god at the top. This intense centralization focalized labor on the creation of massive architectural structures. It also created nations and empires, rulers, kings, and priests. The needs of the larger social organization stimulated the development of writing. The leisure time that was created by dominating the indigenous populations allowed the development of advanced technologies, normally focused around war. Hence many times the Bronze Age is associated with the advance of civilization.
We would like to say that as long as the Stone Age continued a relative parity existed between the agricultural civilizations and these nomadic cultures. But this is a gross simplification. Aggressive cultures with or without metal, dominate peaceful cultures. However we can say that the use of metals in weaponry made it much easier for the aggressive nomadic cultures to dominate the more peaceful agricultural cultures. While both cultures, the nomadic and agricultural, developed bronze technology, the peaceful agri-cultures turned it into ornamentation while the warlike nomadic cultures turned bronze into superior weaponry. As the technology of crafts advanced they made ever more beautiful works of art. As the technology of weaponry advanced, the warlike cultures were able to wage war and dominate peaceful cultures more effectively. Therefore the Age of Metals is associated with the increased subjugation of sedentary agricultural societies by the mobile nomadic societies.
Thus it must be stressed that the Bronze Age military aristocracies did not emerge from the Neolithic farmer cultures. Instead the Bronze Age social organization was based upon the domination of the farming cultures by the herder and hunting societies. Thus the farming culture, sometimes appropriately called the peasant culture, was a necessary precursor to the military aristocracies that followed, but was not complete in and of itself. Mostly it needed the Warrior cultures to dominate and protect them to turn into Bronze Age cultures. Hence it was the interaction of the three cultures that created the Bronze Age, not just the evolution of the farming culture by itself. Thus in some ways the Bronze Age does always follow the Farming Age. It is only because the craft oriented cultures did not develop a military technology and so were prime for domination. In this way the Bronze Age was a stage in the evolution of culture.
While our primary holidays, i.e. Easter, Christmas and Thanksgiving, are based in the late Stone Age = the Neolithic, the Fourth of July and Memorial Day are pure Bronze Age. Another feature of the Bronze Age was the glorification of war. This was a simple extension of the Warrior culture, which glorified battle as a way of life. The Fourth of July with its fireworks remembers the Ōbombs bursting in airÕ, while Memorial Day remembers those who have fought in the wars.
Thus we see that while the cultural Bronze Age brought the centralization of society, which resulted in civilization, as we know it, it also brought about a devastation of human rights, especially womenÕs. Hence while the Bronze Age was a time of technological evolution, it was a simultaneously a time of social devolution, based upon human rights.
Hence the myth of steady progress of human and womenÕs rights is a myth. The reality is that the tribal Stone Age was a great time for equal rights between the sexes. The woman was even venerated as the creator of the Tribe. The lack of social stratification led to relatively equal rights for all members of the Tribe. With the Bronze Age, not the Stone Age, came the social stratification based upon war in which women were dominated and suppressed. While this stage was inevitable, it must be actively reversed as an unnecessary residual of more barbaric times. This statement opposes the statement that the subjugation of women by men is naturally human and canÕt be helped.
The Bronze Age, while a time of technological advance especially in terms of metallurgy, was a big step backwards in terms of human rights, especially womenÕs rights. In some ways the technological advances were as a result of human rights abuse. Certainly the monumental architecture was a result of slave labor. But also, the Bronze Age is notable for large scale irrigation, which brought increased security for the farmers, but which needed a large scale organization to organize and protect the projects. This large scale organization was based upon centralization and stratification of society, which suppressed human rights.
Going back to our previous analogy: First woman domesticated man to form the tribe. Then the tribe domesticated the stones in order to better adapt to their environment. This also furthered our genetic evolution. Then as cultural differentiation began animals were domesticated. This was the beginning of the pastoral cultures. Next the land itself was cultivated leading to the first agricultural settlements. Previously we mentioned that metals of the earth were the next things to be tamed. However as we pointed out, the cultural Bronze Age was more based upon cultural domination and less based upon the actual metal technology. Hence we will call the cultural Bronze Age as the Age to domesticate human cultures. Specifically the nomadic military cultures domesticated the sedentary agri-cultures. Even to this day the agri-cultures are called the peasant cultures, revealing their subservient status.
Now that we have set up some basic societal structures – now that we have discovered something about the nature of the Seed species to be planted in the Chinese soil, it is time to look at the first seed growth of humans. Let us return to China to discover when and how her humans fit into this cultural framework.