While the development of culture was
essential to forming familial-like bonds that lead to the creation of
state-level societies, adaptability of the ruling body was the single biggest
determinant factor in the continuation of any ancient empire.
Adaptability of societal structures has
driven the progress of cultural evolution.
From the harsh Paleolithic planes of Africa to the height of Roman
civilization, the ability of a culture to adapt to both external and internal
changes played a major role in its survivability. Unlike other social species, the human ruling
class directs societies, at least in part.
Out of self-interest and special levels of social intelligence found
only in great apes, the leading individuals have guided the great cultures into
cataclysmic battles for not only their own survival, but also the very culture
they shape. Through the horrors of war,
human societies found either survival in glorious victory, or they disappeared
into the pages of antiquity.
The duality of culture and warfare seem
at odds, although they often walk the same path. Cultural views, like those of some religions,
sometimes condemn violence and the dogs of war starve themselves without
cultural backing and a leash. Still, the
greatest pinnacles of human progress have come at the end of both sword and
pen. However, the greatest falls came
from either the tip of a hired blade or a sip of venomous wine.
Before the great ancient states fell,
they first caused numerous other, lesser states to fall. The heads of those states failed to see the
approaching storm and devise a stratagem to save their own necks. So, it may be tempting to conclude that
adaptability in warfare is the paramount factor in the survival of a society,
but without careful examination, that conclusion would be premature.
The necessity of
Culture
As Homo Sapiens Sapiens transitioned
from hunter-gather societies into the Neolithic age, fundamental changes
occurred that forever changed the nature of human existence. The rise in agricultural efforts required far
more organized labor systems than was previously necessary. The new human landscape was dotted with fixed
structures for both shelter and protection leading to the first urban
environments. Trade of any excess goods
moved humans to a new economic social system; crafts and written languages that
had not previously been possible became a by-product of creative and
intellectual processes; new specialized divisions of labor set up and
administered through new government forms included the first true militaries
and organized religions (Spielvogel 4-5). A new culture was developing, but
this was not the beginning.
The first primate-descendants that can be
fully identified as humans were a product of social organization. According to Doyne Dawson, an ancient and
medieval historian, “… the most obvious factor that unmistakably distinguishes
every primitive human group from every group of non-human primates is the
sexual division of labour: men hunt and
woman gather, and food is shared at a home base” (Dawson 39). This division lays the groundwork for the
social adaptations that follow all human societies. While other primates do exercise some form of
food-sharing behaviors, humans’ use of food goes beyond exchanging food for
“sexual favors” as seen in apes (39).
The
key factor in systematic development of human family and band structure may
have been the rise of intensive big-game hunting, which made available great
quantities of meat on an irregular basis, and made food sharing highly
adaptive. A hunting-and-gathering group
organized in that way was a superbly well-adapted social organism, living at
the top of the food chain, immune from predators, with no rivals except groups
like itself. (39)
So, with little risk one could forward
the argument that many of the changes in the Neolithic period had prehistoric
roots. While far more regular than
hunting, farming may very well be based on the same food-sharing behavior seen
earlier. Likewise, permanent structures
simply may have been enabled by the lack of wandering and migration made necessary
by the hunter-gather life-style, but essentially, it is the same as the
tendency of home basing. Consequently,
it could be said that the foundations of culture are progressive adaptations of
behavior that helped Homo Sapiens Sapiens survive in often predator-rich and
harsh environments.
However, without societal revolutions
from primate-like personal aggression centered on access to food and breeding
toward the beginnings of culture, human evolution could have taken a different
path. The changes in social structure
that led to the Neolithic agricultural revolution played (and continue to play)
an important role in history. Culture
became a glue that fused individuals into families, bands, tribes, clans and
eventually into states.
Warfare as a force of
change
Basic survival may explain the
continuation and migration of the species, but it barely scratches the surface
of the humans’ rise to the top of the food chain. For that, one must look forward to a behavior
that is only observed in two creatures: warfare.
Dawson offers a restrictive definition
of warfare, “coalitional intraspecific aggression” (25). This description explicitly excludes much of
the violent tendencies of other species, such as the pack hunting and general
antagonistic behaviors of hyenas, lions, chimpanzees, and the like, but does
not limit warfare to a human-only endeavor (Dawson 25-32). It seems that ants also developed “genuinely
coalitional aggression” that is limited to, or at least focused on, different
“kin” groups of the same species (25).
With upwards of 20 million sibling ants in one anthill, aggression
between colonies over “territory, food stores and slaves” lead to all-out
conflicts that often end only when one of the groups is completely destroyed
(25-6).
While strikingly similar to the human
stories that unfold countless times, there is no direct evolutionary link that
leads from ants to humans. That is not
to say that the comparison is not without use.
“Humans did not practice the ant kind of warfare until they lived in
communities that resemble anthills – sedentary, densely populated, rigorously
organized, highly territorial” (Dawson 26).
The combination of kin groups and anthill-like cities in the early Neolithic
period gave humans a new form of direct competition where relatively minor
social changes might lead to victory, and thus survival, or decimation. “The extinction of entire tribes is a fairly
common event in the tribal world. … A recent study estimated that 10 per cent
of the ethnic groups in New Guinea have become extinct through warfare in every generation” (57-60). This view can be likened to the theory of group
selection where the evolutionary mechanism of natural selection is transferred
from the individual to groups.
Group Selection or Cultural
Exchange?
Even with historic examples of this,
like the brutal practices of the Assyrian kings laying waste to entire
populations of cities that resisted their control, or the absolute destruction
of Carthage by the Romans (Spielvogel 31, 83), human civilization became far
more complex than anthills before cities began to resemble them. One of those complexities was the emergence
of religion.
The exact roots of religion and the
cultural communication of one belief structure into another are widely debated,
but the process of synthesis is well known even today. All major Western religions have ideological
roots from pre-existing beliefs.
Christianity and Islam both stem, at least partially, from Judaism. In turn, the Hebrew belief structure shows
evidence that it evolved during the Babylonian exile (Spielovgel 27). After all, the Babylonians practiced the
earliest known monotheistic religion, Zoroastrianism (37), during the
Israelites’ captivity and the Bible repeats some of the stories first found in the
Epic of Gilgamesh (12). So, the relationship between conquerors and
the vanquished is not always the same as the ants’ victory by decimation
because human adaptability allows for cultural exchange.
Still, the effect of cultural domination
can at times have similar effects to total war.
One case of this is the Assyrian conquest of the Kingdom of Israel. The resulting captivity of the surviving
Israelites led to atrophy by assimilation and, consequentially, the 10 lost
tribes somehow abandoned their cultural identity (26). The result of combining two cultures at this
early stage of human history is hard to gauge by the scant surviving written
evidence. The mystery of the lost tribes
will remain as such, unless some fortunate archeological discovery sheds more
light on the subject.
Along with warfare leading to religious
and cultural exchange, there are other factors at work. Trade and colonization have lent a shaping
hand to the world as well. For example,
the Phoenicians, the sea-faring people from the Near East, managed to do more
at spreading Mesopotamian culture through exploration and had a more lasting
impact than any army from the Fertile Crescent had. By shipping trade goods around the
Mediterranean, they exported not only the products of the Near East but also
their alphabet (30). It is even possible
that the reach of their ships far exceeded that of Alexander the Great or even
mighty Rome at its height.
One intriguing possibility is that as
early as 750 B.C.E. the Mayan civilization in Mesoamerica came into direct
contact with the Near Eastern masters-of-the-sea, leaving in their wake the
inspiration for monumental stone heads that “may be realistic portraits of West
Africans, perhaps part of the Phoenician group,” as indicated by anthropologist Ivan Van Sertima (qtd. in Loewen
43). The theory, first conceived in
1862, has continually been questioned and, like the lost tribes, may remain a
mystery (43).
Warfare’s function in group
selection
The violent clash of nations taking up
arms against nations stands in stark contrast with the subtleties of cultures
sculpting features of themselves on their neighbors. In warfare, there is little doubt as to what
concept came from whom or what ultimately happened to the people never heard
from again. Even in antiquity, kings
scribed upon the walls of their palaces the story of their conquests, erected
monuments to their victories and provided historians with one-sided
accounts. The missing records from the
other participants often show their fate.
So, even when taking into account other
factors of the complex systems of human interaction, group selection may still
be a real determining factor in the rise and fall of tribes and nations.
A
tribe with a stirringly belligerent ‘god of battles’ wins wars against rival
tribes whose gods urge peace and harmony, or tribes with no gods at all. Warriors who unshakably believe that a
martyr’s death with send them straight to paradise fight bravely, and willingly
give up their lives. So tribes with this
kind of religion are more likely to survive in inter-tribal warfare, steal the
conquered tribe’s livestock and seize their women as concubines. Such successful tribes prolifically spawn
daughter tribes that go off and propagate more daughter tribes, all worshipping
the same tribal god. The idea of a group
spawning daughter groups, like a beehive throwing off swarms, is not
implausible, by the way. … Those of us who belittle group selection admit that
in principle it can happen. (Dawkins 170)
Dawkins explains that his reasons to
“belittle” the group selection theory stems from a weakness in the above
scenario. If a self-interested
individual were to withhold his own personal sacrifice while allowing others of
his tribe to become martyrs, he would be “only slightly less likely to end up
on the winning side” and then would have a better opportunity to procreate (171). Dawkins admits that some of Charles Darwin’s
work suggests something like group selection with tribe-level cooperative and
altruistic behavior helping one group to grow in numbers, but not in terms of
forming daughter groups “like a beehive throwing off swarms” (170-172). Again, humans became more complex than bees
or ants, and the intricacies of culture have a major impact on how human groups
evolve.
To add to Dawkins’ protest of group
selection, examples of self-interested people using altruistic beliefs of their
kin to better their own lot literally dominate human history. A concentration of this kind of behavior can
nearly always be found in any given society.
To go one step further, the dualistic effects of self-interested
individuals living with altruistic individuals lends itself to the basis of
class, government and religion.
The rich patrician senators of Rome sent
legions of poor plebian soldiers headed by centurions of the middle equestrian
class. Each, in their own self-interest,
played their part, but rare was the senator that also took up gladius and pilum
in defense of Rome. Nor would it be an
easy task to find a priest of the imperial cult that willingly took up a post
in the front and center rank of a formation, without some other motivation.
Machiavellian
Intelligence
Self-interested tendencies can be
ascribed to a by-product of Machiavellian intelligence; a level of social
intelligence that allows individuals to suppose the thoughts and intentions of
another, “picture other possible worlds and design alternative scenarios”,
“empathize” and “practice deception and cruelty” (Dawson 34). According to Dawson, only through these
thought processes can true coalitional behavior exist because capabilities and allegiances
must be considered before a coalition can be formed (35). In the anthill, kin are nearly identical and
all but single-minded, but in humans and other great apes, both ability and
fidelity vary greatly. Additionally,
both factors are prone to change as quickly as the environment.
In large-scale organizations that tend
to resemble living organisms, like states, a malfunction of loyalty or ability
can cause great harm in much the same way a disease affects a body. Both Caligula and Nero possessed a level of
self-interest that far exceeded their interest in the people of Rome. The social “disease” provoked strong
responses in both cases.
In Caligula’s case, his behavior sparked
rumors of insanity that may not have been fully justified, but certainly did
not endear him to the Praetorian Guard, which, also motivated by unspecified
personal reasons, assassinated him (Fagan par. 4, 6). Nero’s “extravagances” led the legions to
revolt against him (Spielvogel 99).
Dysfunctions such as these led Niccelò Machiavelli, a 15th century
author, to study history and the “pathology of human society” (Machiavelli
xiii).
The
Roman republic fascinated Machiavelli for a variety of reasons: for one thing,
there was a suggestive analogy with his native Florence as it declined from the
vigour of its republican ideals into the mid-fifteenth century to become a
Medici fief. In the Roman history,
particularly in Sallust, he could trace a comparable process which lead
inexorably to the ignominy of imperial rule. (Machiavelli xiii)
In 1513 he penned a book that would
concrete his name into the lexicon of Western civilization, The Prince. The term Machiavellian
is now defined as “… the principles of conduct laid down by Machiavelli; specifically: marked
by cunning, duplicity, or bad faith” (“Machiavellian”).
Despite the modern
commentary of ethical and political vernacularism,
Machiavelli’s understanding of history gave him a perspective on the paths to
gaining and maintaining power. In fact, he
wrote The Prince as a sort of primer
for the “newly restored Medici regime in Florence” in the hope that the book
might help establish a solid government in central Italy (Machiavelli xi). Italy, like most of Europe, had been in an often-violent
state of political flux and turmoil with kingdoms and principalities sometimes
lasting mere generations rather than the centuries of relative stability it had
enjoyed under the Roman Republic and Empire.
In Machiavelli’s own lifetime, the armies of France and Spain had turned
Italy into “a convenient arena for fighting battles”, “a pawn for the two great
powers” (Spielvogel 220). As with tribal
wars and ants, examples of state-level cultures disappearing through conquest,
assimilation and decimation provided motivation for him to help a government
rise in strength enough to stop the process.
Into this world, with the hope of seeing
a steady sovereign rise out of Florence, Machiavelli committed The Prince to print. His approach to political commentary relied
heavily on the trends he saw in history.
Citing the lives of people like Darius III, Alexander the Great, and Julius
Caesar, Machiavelli conveys a deep understanding of the archetypes of
government. To him, there were two main categories:
principalities and republics. Of those,
two types of principalities, “hereditary”, which were difficult for a prince to
lose; and “new”, which suffered from a wide variety of weaknesses and
instabilities (Machiavelli 3).
Darius III, lost power over his Persian
empire when Alexander the Great defeated him at the battle of Issus in 333
B.C.E. (Spielvogel 62). Darius’ great
Persian Empire stretched back many generations, but Alexander’s in Greece was
only dawning.
Considering
the difficulties which men have had to hold a newly acquired state, some might
wonder how, seeing that Alexander the Great became the master of Asia in a few
years, and died whilst it was yet scarcely settled (whence it might appear
reasonable that the whole empire would have rebelled), nevertheless his
successors maintained themselves, and had to meet no other difficulty than that
which arose among themselves from their own ambitions. (Machiavelli 17)
According to Machiavelli, Darius’ empire
was not one of a series of ancestral barons that held their own lands but one
with a strong, central sovereign with complete power, control and affection of
the people. In this way, the effort to
conquer the land was great because it was difficult to find “malcontents and
such as desire a change” and thus difficult to gain an internal edge over the
current ruler (19). However, his
military had failed to adapt to the changes in warfare and tactics of the
lethal combinations of Greek Hoplites and Macedonian Cavalry. The effectiveness of his government to
maintain its borders disappeared once Darius had fled the battle of Issus.
Still, it would seem that Alexander’s premature
death left the Persians an opportunity to retake a majority of their lands, if
not expand into the areas left virtually unguarded by the Greeks. However, according to Machiavelli, because of
a complete absence of nobles that held the support of the people, the resulting
lack of leadership allowed the dawning of the Hellenistic world (18-20). In illuminating this, Machiavelli made the suggestion
to Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici, the new
ruler of Florence, that it would be more difficult to attack the Turks than the
French, but far easier to hold the land afterwards.
By the comparison
of the Turks and Persians, Machiavelli affirms the concept that human
civilizations evolve in similar ways, which if properly examined can be used
with Dawson’s conception of Machiavellian intelligence to help rulers imagine
different outcomes to real problems that they faced. In the above example, one could say that both
Darius and Alexander failed to sustain their respective governments because
neither anticipated the changing political, social and
warfare environments.
Darius failed to adapt his military
tactics and strategies to counter Alexander.
Nor did he have any form of contingency in the event of his death or
defeat. Likewise, Alexander failed to
understand the internal political turmoil that expanding an empire so quickly
generates. Even after suffering catastrophic
losses on his march back from India, arriving at his Babylonian deathbed, he
continued to plan future military campaigns (Spielvogel 63).
It is important to note that even with
his quick rise to power and unprecedented success in conquest, Alexander’s
failure to name a successor splintered the great empire he had built (Spielvogel
64). While he was alive, his own
charisma pulled his country together, but failing to plan for his death insured
that it would crumble. As he had put to
sword the great city-states of Greece, his own state was undone, leaving new
Hellenistic kingdoms that, in their own time, would fall to the Republic of
Rome.
Machiavelli believed that in order to be
a great leader, one must study history to avoid the downfalls of the past and
to emulate the characteristics of those that succeeded (Machiavelli 68). He claimed that Alexander followed the
Homeric example of Achilles and Julius Caesar followed Alexander’s (68). The legends of Alexander’s life, sleeping
with a dagger and a copy of the Iliad,
show Machiavelli’s belief has merit (Spielvogel 63). Likewise, a statue of Alexander motivated Caesar
to step down from the position of Quaestor in Hispania in order to reenter
politics (“Julius Caesar”).
Caesar was not only motivated by
Alexander, but it could be said that he avoided the previous mistakes by keeping
the Senate as the chief deliberative body of Rome instead of sweeping over it
as Alexander had done with the Greek democracies. Despite the weakened senatorial power, they
provided a measure of stability that helped Rome survive Brutus’ knife.
Also by adopting Octavian, he helped
insure some continuance of his new government, although future peace required
Octavian’s quick action to seize power from Marc Antony (Spielvogel 92). Octavian went on to further ensure Roman
continuance by establishing a new bureaucratic order (99). So, each successful adaptation to the
previous society, although likely motivated by self-interest, served the
greater good of the civilization and increased the survivability of the nation.
Conclusion
While self-motivated, Machiavellian
intelligence carries a heavily negative connotation, history is ripe with
rulers that postulated the best possible outcome for themselves. From Alexander’s deadly obsession with
conquest to Octavian’s desire for social order with him as the “first citizen,”
the human narrative shows that this social “evil” has played a major role in
the shaping of Western Civilization. The
roots of Machiavellian intelligence trace back before Homo Sapiens Sapiens
became a distinctive group. Along with
that special level of social intelligence, food sharing, division of labor and
home-basing led humans to build the great cities of antiquity and diverse
cultures that filled them.
Stalking the darkest recesses of the
collective subconscious of humanity, the dogs of war kept thrusting cultural
changes upon the people with a steady rhythm that can still be felt to this
day. Despite the violence those changes
often brought, warfare provided rulers with opportunities to advance their own egocentric
ends and in doing so tear down ancient orders that were unwilling or unable to
adapt, build massive empires in the new void, and bring human civilization to
the greatest heights of the age. Still,
new will always become old, and failure to adapt will make any living
organization outdated, ineffective and irrelevant. Somewhere just outside the firelight, the
dogs of war sit, waiting for an opening, probing for a weakness and adapting
new ways to tear down the old order.
Works Cited
Dawkins,
Richard. The God Delusion. London: Bantam Press, 2006. Print.
Dawson,
Doyne. The First Armies. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001.
Print.
Fagan,
Garrett G. "Gaius (Caligula) (A.D. 37-41)." De Imperatoribus
Romanis. 28 Oct. 2004. Web. 25 Apr. 2010.
.
"Julius
Caesar." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 23 Apr. 2010. Web.
25 Apr. 2010. .
Loewen,
James. Lies My Teacher Told Me. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Touchstone,
2007. Print.
Machiavelli,
Niccolò, Dominic Baker-Smith, and W. Marriott. The Prince. Alfred a Knopf
Inc, 1992. Print.
"Machiavellian." Merriam-Webster
Online Dictionary. 2010.
Merriam-Webster Online. 24 April 2010.
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Spielvogel,
Jackson. Western Civilization. Wadsworth Pub Co, 2007. Print.
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