Hi everyone, welcome back to Office Hours with the Brofessor: The
Show Where I Say Things. Tonight: The Origins of Chinese
Civilization, Part II: Big Men and Kings. Or as I like to call it:
Ongka’s Big Chinese Moka.
Last time we talked about some of the early cultures along the
Yellow river during the neolithic period—remember, neolithic means
“new stone age” and refers to the period between the dawn of
agriculture and the first use of metal tools. Basically we had
during this time settled farming villages that were too small to
really call a civilization, but were already forming some of the
cultural elements that we see throughout Chinese history even to
modern times. One of the most important of these societies is called
the Yangshao culture by archaeologists. Its heyday was around the
fifth millennium BC, and by the third millennium BC it had developed
into what is known as the Longshan Culture.
As I say, the Longshan culture
flourished between five and four thousand years ago in the Yellow
River basin. During its second half of development there existed,
for the first time in China, what we might have called
“civilization”(1)--that
is, a culture with cities. Although we cannot really call this the
beginning of Chinese “history”, as written documents from this
time have not (yet?) been discovered, all of the foundations were in
place by the end of the Longshan period(2).
In traditional Chinese historiography, the period between five and
four thousand years ago was a larger-than-life time of heroic
badasses like the Yellow Emperor and Da Yu getting
up to all sorts of heroic
badassery(3).
It’s could it be that
these myths are in fact folk memories of actual people and events
from the Longshan period? Maybe not, but it’s fun to speculate.
At any rate the late Longshan period is, in my view, really where the
“China ball” started not just rolling, but picking up speed. By
this I mean that the distinctly “Chinese” cultural elements we
discussed last time now existed in a stratified urban society.
Regardless of whether the language of the Longshan people was
ancestral to modern Chinese (though it may well have been) the
culture certainly was.
As this new civilization grew,
villages became cities. Hundreds became thousands, then tens of
thousands(4); The result of this population growth, as in other
ancient civilization, was increased social stratification. A
priestly ruling class governed, and being part of it meant
some pretty sweet perks: for one thing, you got to have bitchin’
parties with tons of booze, ostensibly to honor your ancestors (5).
The drink of choice was
probably not unlike Huangjiu(6), or yellow rice beer, still widely
enjoyed in China today.
The strong emphasis of partying by
the ruling class during the early millennia of Chinese history is
particularly interesting when viewed in comparison with other
cultures’ tradition of the “Big Man”. To this day, among some
Papuan and Austronesian speakers of the South Seas, societies tend
to be nominally egalitarian, but in reality things are run by the
local “Big Man”, who everyone respects as the de-facto leader(7).
The position is maintained by a) giving gifts to your neighbors, and
b) throwing awesome parties. Anyone who wants to become the next Big
Man has a simple task: throw
a more epic kegger than the last guy. Friendly competition between
Big Men is of course highly encouraged in these societies, since the
ones who benefit most are the neighbors and friends of the Big Men.
The institution of the Big Man is central to many, if not most,
cultures of the South Seas. In Tok Pisin, a creole language of Papua
New Guinea, the word for “president” is bikman bilong
kantri—“Big Man belong
country”(8). On the other hand, the thing that you don’t want to
be in Tok Pisin is liklik man “small
man”.
The
Big Man society appears to be a fairly natural development in the
emergence of sedentary societies the world over. Consider the
Potlatch of the Pacific Northwest Indians, for example. Even the
term “Big Man” appears in different times, places and languages,
always referring to a man who was not physically large, but rather
socially influential. In ancient Sumer, the earliest kings were
known as lugal—which
literally translates to, you guessed it, Big Man. I’ve always
wondered if this term was a holdover
from the very earliest days of sedentary life, when a Big Man society
actually did exist.
As
populations grew, Big Men became chieftains, and chieftains became
kings. In
ancient China, the proper form of address to a nobleman was 大人
da1ren2
“big man”. The antonym to this was of course
小人
xiao3ren2
“villain”.
Compare both with Tok Pisin bikman/liklik
man.
I don’t know when these terms were first used, but if they were
present in the earliest written documents, I can’t help but wonder
if it’s a holdover from the Longshan period: a time when city
chieftains and kings had been, just a few generations before, village
Big Men. Indeed, traditional Chinese histories talk about the “Three
Emperors and Five Sovereigns” of the extremely remote past not
always
following a hereditary dynastic succession—which corresponds
beautifully to a Big Man society, wherein influence is held by an
individual, but not passed on to children. Very interesting. I
think Ongka, of Anthro 101 fame, would feel quite at home in this
society.
So, that’s my hypothesis: that
in the Longshan culture we are seeing a transition from a Big Man
society to a stratified civilization, and we can hear very faint
echoes of that transition in Chinese mythology to this day. What do
you think? Send me a comment or email, I’d love to discuss this
with you guys. Also, be sure to tune in next time, for Origins of
Chinese Civilization, Part III: Something Happens. See you next
time!
Sources:
8.
Baing,
Susan, and Craig Alan Volker. Papua
New Guinea Tok Pisin English Dictionary.
South Melbourne, Vic: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.
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