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introducción y capitulo 1
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351 views10 pagesHarris, Marvin, Cannibals and Kings, Origins of Culture
introducción y capitulo 1
Uploaded by
Jesús Raziel Hernández RangelCopyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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/ 10
ANTHROPOLOGY
In this brilliant and profound study the distin-
guished American anthropologist Marvin Harris,
shows how the endless varieties of cultural be-
havior—often so puzzling at first glance—can be
explained as adaptations to particular ecological
conditions. His aim is to account for the evolution
of cultural forms as Darwin accounted for the evo-
lution of biological forms: to show how cultures:
adopt their characteristic forms in response to
changing ecological modes.
“{A] magisterial interpretation of the rise
and fall of human cultures and societies.”
Robert Lekachman,
The Washington Post Book World
“Its persuasive arguments asserting the pri-
macy of cultural rather than genetic or psy-
chological factors in human life deserve the
widest possible audience.
—Gloria Levitas, The New Leader
{An} original and...urgent theory about the
nature of man and the reason that human
cultures take so many diverse shapes.”
—The New Yorker
“Lively and controversial.”
=I. Bernard Cohen, front page,
New York Times Book Review
$895 5. 700-34-rer002
AUTHOR OF
COWS, PIGS, WARS AND WITCHES
“A landmark book’'-Richard Boeth, Newsweek Introduction For centuries the Western world has been comforted by
the belief that material progress will never end. We take
‘our cars, telephones, and central heating as proof that
living is far easier for us today than it was for our
‘grandparents. And although we recognize that progress
may be slow and uneven, with temporary setbacks, we
feel that living wil, on Balance, be a lot easier in the
feture than itis now.
Scientifc theories, for the most pert formulated =
‘hundred years ago, nourish this belief. From the van-
‘age point of Victorian scientists, the evolution of cul-
tre seemed to be a pilgrimage up a steep mountain
from the top of which civilized peoples could look down
at various levels of savagery and barbarism yet to be
passed by “lower” cultures. The Victorians exaggerated
the material poverty of the so-called savages and at the
same time inflated the benefits of industrial “civilize.
tion.” They pictured the old stone age as a time of
‘great fear and insecurity, when people spent their days
‘ceaselessly searching for food and their nights huddled
about fires in comfortless caves besieged by saber-
toothed tigers. Only when the secret of how to plant
crops was discovered did our “savage” ancestors have
‘enough leisure time to settle down in villages and build
‘comfortable dwellings. And only then could they store
surplus food and have time to think and experiment with new ideas. This in turn supposedly led to the im
vention of writing, to cities, to organized governments
and the flowering of art end science, Then came the
steam engine, ushering in a new and more rapid phase
of progress, the industrial revolution, with its miraca-
Tous comucopia of mass-produced labor-saving ma-
chines and life-enhancing technology.
Ttisnt easy to overcome this kind of indoctrination,
Nevertheless, growing numbers of people can't help
feeling that industrial society has a hollow core and that
despite media images of fun-filled leisure hours our prog
eny will have to work harder and harder to hold on to
the few luxuries we now enjoy. The great industrial
comucopia has not only been polluting the earth with
oisons; it has also been spewing forth in-
shoddy, costly, and detective goods and
services.
‘My purpose in this book is to replace the old on-
‘wards-and-upwards Victorian view of progress with
more realistic account of cultural evolution. What is
happening to today’s standard of living has happened
in the past. Our culture is not the first that technology
hhas failed, Nor is tthe first to reach its limits of growth.
The technologies of earlier cultures failed again and
again, only to be replaced by new technologies. And
limits of growth have been reached and transcender
only to be reached and transcended again. Much of
‘what we think of as contemporary progress is actually
a regaining of standards that were widely enjoyed dur-
ing prehistoric times.
‘Stone age populations lived healthier lives than did
most of the people who came immediately after the
during Roman times there was more sickness in the
world than ever before, and even in early nineteeath-
century England the life expectancy for children wat
probably not very different from what it was 20,000
‘years earlier. Moreover, stone age hunters worked
fewer hours for their sustenance than do typical Chinese
and Egyptian peasants—or, despite their unions, mod-
fem-day factory workers. As for amenities such as good
food, entertainment, and aesthetic pleasures, carly
Ihunters and plant collectors enjoyed luxuries that only
the richest of today's Americans can afford. For two
Gays" worth of trees, lakes, and clear air, the modem
day executive works five, Nowadays, whoie families toil
and save for thirty years to gain the privilege of secing
a few square feet of grass outside their windows. And
they are the privileged few. Americans say, “Meat
‘makes the meal,” and their diet is rich (some say too
rich) in animal proteins, but two-thirds of the people
alive today are involuntary vegetarians. In the stone
‘age, everyone maintained a high-protein, low-starch
diet, And the meat wasn't frozen or pumped ful of anti-
bioties and artificial color.
‘But I haven't written this book to talk down modern.
‘American and European standards of living. No one
that we are better off today than were our
‘geat-grandparents in the last century. And no one can
deny that science and technology have helped to im=
rove the diet, health, longevity, and creature comforts
‘of hundreds of millions of people. In matters such as
‘contraception, security against natural calamities, and
cease of transportation and communication, we have
‘obviously surpassed even the most affluent of earlier
societies. The question uppermost in my mind is not
‘whether the gains of the last 150 years are real, but
whether they are permanent. Can the recent industrial
snucopia be looked upen as the tip of a single con-
tinuously rising curve of material and spiritual uplift
of is it the latest bubble-like protuberance on a curve
can deny that slopes down as often as it slopes up? I think the
‘second view is more in accord with the evidence and
explanatory principles of modern anthropology.
‘My aim is to show the relationship between material
‘and spiritual well-being and the cost/benefits of various
systems for increasing production and controlling pop-
ulation growth. In the past, iresistible reproductive
[prestures arising from the lack of safe and effective
means of contraception Jed recurrently to the intensifi-
cation of production. Such intensification has always I
to environmental depletion, which in general results in
new systems of production—each with a characteristic,
form of institutionalized violence, drudgery, exploita-
tion, or cruelty. Thus reproductive pressure, intensfica-
tion, and environmental depletion would appear to
provide the key for understanding the evolution of
family organization, property relations, political econ-
omy, and religious beliefs, including dietary preferences
and food taboos. Modera contraceptive and abortion
techniques enter this picture as potentially decisive new
elements, since they remove the excruciating penalties
associated with all preexisting techniques for coping
rectly with reproductive pressures through fertility
control. But the new technology of contraception and
abortion may have come too late. Contemporary state
societies are committed to the intensification of the in-
dustrial mode of production. We have only begun 10
pay the penalties for the environmental depletions asso-
ciated with this new round of intensification, and no
cone can predict what now constraints will be needed to
transcend the limits of growth of the industri
Tam aware that my theories of historical d
are likely to provoke an unfavorable reaction. Some
readers will be offended by the casual links I point
to among cannibalism, religions of love and mercy,
Introduction sil
eqetaranisn, intatcide, and the cost/benets of poe
‘rston. As tres, I ay bo accwed of seeking to
fhpaton te bomen spist within a closed systom of
‘ihanfcal relationship, But sy intention i exactly
opposite That a Bind form of sm
fled ibe past does not sean that it must rule the fr
Before going any further, I should clarity the mean-
fog of tho word “Geterminim.” Tn the context of twen-
‘Eatrectary erence one no longs peak of use and
fees in he sense of mechanical one-o-on6 lane
{hip between dependent and independent variable. In
fhtatonic physes Hesenberg'sPindeerminncy pri-
ra abetting cauo-end eect probabil boat
ite parle fo cause end-ect certains, hus long
eld fay. Since to pradign “one exception falsien
the alo hs let it eign In physi, for ont, have
0 tntenon of imposing ft on clturl pheaomeos. By
f cetermnise elatonship among cultural phenomena,
Trnean merely tht sila variables under similar com
‘Sons tend to give ise to similar consequences
“SacI bleve that te elaonship botween material
proces and moral preference ison of probabliin
Tod einlaies rater than cers and idetii, I
fave no diet in believing both that Bstory i de
feomined and that human beings bavo the capacity 10
Caen ra cle wd ie wil fs, nit on
fhe poss that improbable Bistorcal eveatsivol-
fag tbe unpredictable reveal of normal cause-and-
tht elonshipe between, mate proceses and
afore can gorur and that teefore we 6 al epon-
{ble for or cotrbution to history. But to argue tha
te human bongs have the eapacity to make clture and
tory conform to standards of our own fice choles
ot tu soy tat history i actualy tho expresion ofthat pacity. Far from it. As I shall show, cultures on the
‘whole have evolved along parallel and convergent paths
which are highly predictable from a knowledge of the
‘processes of production, reproduction, intensification,
‘and depletion. And I include here both abhorred and
cherished rituals and beliefs throughout the world.
In my opinion, free will and moral choice have. had
virtually no significant effect upon the directions taken
thus far by evolving systems of social life. If 1 am cor
rect, it behooves those who are concemed about pro-
fecting human dignity from the threat of mechanical
determinism to join me in pondering the question: why
hhas social life up to now consisted overwhelmingly of
predictable rather than unpredictable arrangements? I
am convinced that one of the greatest existing obstacles
to the exercise of free choice on behalf of achieving the
improbable goals of peace, equality, and alluence is
the failure to recognize the material evolutionary pro=
‘esses that account for the prevalence of wars, inequal-
ity, and poverty. As a result of the studied neglect of
the science of culture, the world is full of moralists in
sisting that they have freely willed what they were
‘unwittingly forced to want, while by not understanding
the odds against free choice, millions who would be free
have delivered themselves into new forms of bondage.
To change social life for the better, one must begin with
the knowledge of why it usually changes for the worse.
‘That is why I consider ignorance of the causal factors
in cultural evolution and disregard of the odds against
a desired outcome to be forms of moral duplicity. dl
Culture and Nature The explorers sent out during Europe's great age of
iscovery were slow to grasp the global pattern of
‘customs and institutions. In some regions—Australia,
the Arctic, the southern tips of South America and
Africe—they found groups still living much like Eu-
rope’s own long-forgotten stone age ancestors: bands of
twenty or thirty people, sprinkled across vast territories,
constantly on the move, living entirely by hunting ani
‘mals and collecting wild plants. These hunter-collectors
appeared to be members of rare and endangered
species. In other regions—the forests of eastern North
‘Ametica, the jungles of South America, and East Asia
—they found denser populations, inhabiting more ot
less permanent villages, based on farming and consist-
Ing of perhaps one or two large communal structures,
bt here too the weapons and tools were relics of pro=
history
Along the banks of the Amazon and the Mississippl,
and on the islands of the Pacific, the villages were
bigger, sometimes containing a thousand or more inhiab-
itants. Some were organized into confoderacies verging
fon statehood. Although the Europeans exoggerated
their “savagery,” the majority of these village commu-
nites collected enemy heads as trophies, roasted their
prisoners of war alive, and consumed human flesh in
ritual feasts. The fact that the “civilized” Buropeans 4 CANNIBALS AND EIKOS
also tortured people—ia witcherat trials, for example
and that they were not against exterminating the pop-
ulations of whole cities should be kept in mind (even it
they were squeamish about eating one another).
Elsewhere, of couse, the explorers encountered
veloped states and empires, headed by despots and
ruling classes, and detended by standing armies. It was
these great empires, with ther cies, monuments, pal
aces, temples, and’ treasures, that had lured all the
Marco Polos and Columbuses across the oceans and
