Cannibals and Kings by Marvin Harris.

Ophelia · Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 7:21 am Post subject:

Crickey! I've lost my post (the choice of expletive is because I am reading PG Wodehouse on the side).

Next: the end of animal sacrifices in religious rituals-- which came gradually.

"After Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire (...) in AD 363 the holding of love feasts (agapes) on church premises was forbidden at the Council of Laodicea."

Harris sees no particular moral meaning in the evolution from human sacrifices to a ritual with no food, but I think several explanations can be true at onece. Anyway, his is well-worth reading:

"Nineteenth century anthropologists saw in the line of development which led from human sacrifice to human sacrifice to the wafer and the wine of the eucharist a vindication of the doctrine of moral progress and enlightenment."

So he explains the change in terms of an increase in population coupled with inadequate source of animal proteins.

"What the end of animal sacrifice really signified was the end of ecclesiastical redistributive feasting."

Then the next step-- again this is fascinating, if a little irreverent, but it would be nice to have corroborating evidence, to know what other researchers said about this for example.
"When the globe had filled with tens of millions of ragged sweating drudges, the "great providers" were unable to act with the "open-handed generosity" of barbarian chiefs of yore. Under Christianity, buddhism and Islam they became "great believers" and built cathedrals, mosques and temples where nothing at all was served to eat."

I must say that I also admire Harris's use of language. Once more I wonder which readers he had in mind - students, some members of the general public, other academics? I see a sense of enjoyment in the use of phrases like "barbarian chiefs of yore" or "ragged sweating drudges" to make his point and convey criticism.

So here we are. Like many other people, I read about the building of the Cathedrals in the Middle Ages-- the faith of the people, especially ordinary men, is undeniable, but nobody had presented it to me as the continuation of the redistributive tradition of the great feasts... of yore!

Ophelia · Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 7:37 am Post subject:

As I was (re)writing my previous post, it became obvious that a look at how people had reacted to Harris's book was necessary.
Harris's writings are all very well for me, or for you, Mr President since they confirm what you think about population and food, but I can't imagine they would sit well with everybody, especially when they were published over forty years ago.

So I looked, and... yes, a lot has been written about this book!

I'll start with one reference I find interesting - which in turn gives a second reference... This is entitled "Vitriol and Misinformation". Cool

http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Harris/criticism.htm

So, the reference above shows that Harris generates passionate discussions and criticism:

President Camacho · Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 8:18 am Post subject:

It didn't really strike me as hypocritical that priests should skim something off of the top. By introducing redistributive feasting first, Harris really gets me in the mindset of why sacrificing is done. God really doesn't have anything to do with it. Ecological conditions, population density, and politics have everything to do with it. So why shouldn't there be priests that take their cut too. They're a new cog in a machine that is growing and growing.

What I want to know is how far the Church trails in teaching people about what the right/wrong thing is to do. It would seem like today the church would be all about environmentalism but it isn't. If ecological standards were such that raising pigs would severely curb the growth and prosperity of a small village, then pigs would suffer the same fate that they suffered from the Israelites. The same goes for the veneration of cows in India. The difference, I'm aware, is that these people were constantly fighting off starvation. Still, what the hell is the Church doing to help people today? Emotional hand jobs are about all that is needed from them in America, I guess.

Harris should have talked about the Brahmans being a hereditary priesthood a little bit more. This is a whole group of kings that are able to take their cut from everyone's meat, potentially forever.

I really can't stand redistribution. It takes away freedom. The fact that these groups started out honest and slowly started to coerce people into doing as they wished by changing their contributions into taxes - makes me especially angry. Once these groups get enough power so that they don't have to ask and instead have the ability to order, they do so. People allow it to happen, too. Anyone who voted for Hillary Clinton was doing this. Anyone voting Republican or Democrat is doing this.

People like to stick with what works. It's part survival mechanism and part laziness. Snakes bite; I don't touch (any type of) snakes. Apples taste good; I eat apples. What they receive by voting the same people/groups in power is some piece of mind that they're getting a product that is about the same as the one they voted for before, the one they found most favorable or least harmful.

This is similar to the idea of a fast food restaurant. Although they are hundreds of miles from home, a person can walk into the same fast food restaurant and order their same meal. They're comfortable.

What they don't realize is that they are expanding, solidifying, and entrenching the power of the people/groups they vote for. Now McDonald's is on every corner, cars run on gasoline, and they work at Wal-Mart.

It's as if people want subjugation. It feels so nice....lol

It would be interesting if Harris was able to pinpoint when the mutation from providers to takers occurred.

Your quote about the Levites holding select morsels for themselves is about the same as what the Aztecs did with human sacrifices. It's a tax or a fee and something which helps these people retain power. How do you keep others from knowing your business? You make it exclusive. Hence, the Israelites have the Levites and the Celts have the Druids. Then, if you're really evil - you make priests hereditary like the Brahmans.

Always seeking more power. More power means less people in control of more people. Small select groups in control of meat distribution at times when cows were THE sign of wealth. It would be like a small group being in charge of money, gold, or oil today.
Furious

Ophelia · Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 8:34 am Post subject:

Camacho, we've been writing at the same time, so this is the continuation of my previous reference, not an answer to your post.

"What is Cultural Materialism?

Anthropology is the study of humans. Cultural materialsm is an anthropological school of thought (or "research strategy") that says that the best way to understand human culture is to examine material conditions - climate, food supply, geography, etc.

Marvin Harris explained it this way in his preface to his CULTURAL MATERIALISM - The Struggle for a Science of Culture:

"Cultural Materialism is the strategy I have found to be most effective in my attempt to understand the causes of differences and similarities among societies and cultures. It is based on the simple premise that human social life is a response to the practical problems of earthly existence...."

Rival Theories

Today there are two main rivals to the materialist approach: idealism (sometimes called "cultural" in opposition to "materialist") which says that human ideas have a stronger effect on culture than material conditions; and the biological approach - often known by the current most popular school of biological thought, evolutionary psychology, which says that human culture can best be explained through human biological evolution.
Marvin Harris and others

The leading proponent of Cultural Materialism was the late Marvin Harris (1927-2001), who came up with the name, and wrote classroom textbooks, scholarly books, and popular works about cultural materialism throughout his career. His best known general-reader books are Cows, Pigs, Wars & Witches and Cannibals and Kings. He was a strong advocate for a scientific view of culture, as reflected in the title of Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture, published in 1979."
[/quote] (reference given in my previous post).
(emphasis mine)

President Camacho · Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 8:39 am Post subject:

I'm just theorizing. I don't know the truth - only what I read in books.

This is what I gather after reading Collapse and Cannibals:

All I can imagine to support Harris' Aztec theory is that there was a population explosion in Mesoamerica, a mass extinction of large animals during the pleistocene epoch caused by human hunting and altered ecological conditions, a rise of slash and burn farming that radically degraded the soil, potential mass starvation... and an as*hole that decided eating people was the answer.

Look what happened on Easter Island. It was practically the same thing but magnified. Population took off, resources exhausted, mass extinction event, mass human starvation and cannibalism.

The only difference is cannibalism remained popular in MesoAmerica because the Aztecs made it ethically OK. It became more than OK, it became a whole religion.

As for hunting, people had a better chance of gaining calories through farming and eating sacrifices. If there were "millions of ducks" within reach of a huge civilization that was in need of meat, the resource would have been exhausted.

This is of course except if the Aztec society had become so comfortable with eating humans that they didn't seek other "lower" forms of meat protein. As we have seen with pigs, cows, dogs, and horses - this isn't at all impossible. The ducks might have been allowed to return and flourish after their near extinction because Aztecs had already become accustomed to eating human flesh.

President Camacho · Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 8:53 am Post subject:

This book is very entertaining and that may be a little dangerous. Have you ever read Kon Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl? He believed that people from Peru traveled west to populate Easter Island and other islands. He built his own raft using methods and resources of the same pre-columbian time period and sails west over the pacific ocean. He makes it too! It was all very entertaining and very believable. Unfortunately, he's a crack pot. It was proven through carbon dating that the Polynesian islands were populated from the west, not the east.

Thor went even further to say that pyramids were the result of Egyptians traveling west to the Americas. He built his own reed sail-boat and made the expedition on the second try. Very entertaining - very ludicrous.

Smile

Ophelia · Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 10:33 am Post subject:

Penelope · Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 10:43 am Post subject:

I am so, so interested in this debate....I could 'cry' that I haven't yet got a copy of this book.

The point about the food offered as sacrifice to the Gods.....yet eaten by the all-too-human priests, and sometimes, by the offerers themselves....Does it not reflect ourselves in this modern day?....we give money to Oxfam....to feed the hungry....because 'perhaps' we don't want to have people starving to death......making us feel guilty.......

How inconvenient that would be!!!!

I think it is something about our 'intentions'......

The Hindus have a very separate and special way of dealing with human need......The needs of the receiver and the needs of the donator...

Carry on.....Pres.C and Ophelia...I am really interested.....

Ophelia · Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 10:43 am Post subject:

Ophelia · Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 10:54 am Post subject:

Penelope wrote:

President Camacho · Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 11:13 am Post subject:

By making a stronger argument for cultural materialism in an entertaining and popular book, Harris is setting the stage for mass education and debate. He's promoting his theory rather than defending it.

If anything, cultural materialism should be considered. Cost/benefit is a great way to find out why people (most of the time) do things. There are exceptions to every rule but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be applied because of a few statistical outliers. No, I think cultural materialism has significant weight, although it is not the only motive why people do what they do.

Penelope, most of the topics in this book are rather controversial and make for great discussion. Abortion, infanticide, cannibalism, and male dominance are just a few examples. You can give your opinion Smile

Penelope · Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 11:46 am Post subject:

Ophelia said:-

Ophelia · Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 3:30 pm Post subject:

Camacho wrote:

President Camacho · Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 3:32 pm Post subject:

That's probably what I did... sometimes things like that get stuck in my head and I use it as my own. I'm not claiming it. Did you say it already? I'm going to go back through and read all the posts.


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