4. Contemporary Social Evolution

It must be remembered that necessity is only the mother of invention; socially accumulated knowledge is its father. — ROBERT K. MERTON

The theorist who first brought social evolutionary theory back to mainstream contemporary sociology was Gerhard Lenski, tentatively at first in his book Power and Privilege in 1966, and then far more boldly and insistently with his introductory textbook, Human Societies, first published in 1970 and now in its eleventh edition.¹ In 2005, Lenski wrote Ecological-Evolutionary Theory, a comprehensive summary of the theory he developed over a forty-year span. Lenski’s ecological-evolutionary theory is a synthesis of key insights of the founders of sociology and of contemporary macrosociology and anthropology.² In exploring the origin, maintenance, and change of sociocultural systems, ecological-evolutionary theory places great emphasis upon the intensification of the material infrastructure (population, production, and the division of labour) proposed by Malthus, Spencer, Durkheim, and Marx. Lenski’s ecological-evolutionary theory is intended to explain the big picture of socio-cultural origins, the maintenance of sociocultural systems over time, and the processes of sociocultural evolution. To fully understand a sociocultural system or any of its component parts—whether infrastructural, structural, or superstructural—analysis must begin in the context of this macro-level vision, for all sociocultural systems have an evolutionary history that, combined with their natural and social environments, largely determines their present and future (Lenski 2005, 5, 15).³

For Lenski, like Spencer, sociocultural evolution is not analogous to biological evolution but has evolved from that process. “In other words,” he explains, “one of the basic principles of modern evolutionary theory is that the evolutionary process itself evolves” (2005, 5). The primary difference between natural and social evolution is in the recording of prior experience. Biological evolution depends upon DNA and genetic change to transmit this information to descendants and is therefore an extremely slow process, relying upon random genetic variation to successfully adapt to changing environments. Sociocultural evolution, on the other hand, depends upon symbol-based cultural information, which is learned and can be transmitted across cultures (6, 121). This has several consequences for the social evolutionary process: (1) it makes sociocultural evolution a far more rapid process; (2) individual and eventually social adaptation becomes potentially deliberative and purposeful; and (3) it gives rise to intersocietal selection in which successful adaptations by individual societies become critical factors in the competition between societies for resources, thus causing the conquest and extinction of many sociocultural systems through time and the convergence of those systems that remain (111–13).

Marion Blute (2010) also applies principles developed in biology directly to sociocultural evolution. Like Lenski, she believes that social learning is the mechanism by which successful sociocultural adaptations are acquired by individuals. While culture is often broadly defined as the “way of life for a people,” various texts in sociology and anthropology give many different definitions. “Almost all of these, however, emphasize that the culture of a people is ‘shared’ or similar and is so, not because it is genetic, nor because it has been learned individually, but because it has been learned socially—i.e. members are similar because they share a common cultural ancestry” (30–31). Blute focuses much more on the process of evolution than on the story of human history itself. She identifies four factors that determine both the sociocultural and biological evolutionary process: constraints (physical and chemical), chance (something has to arise before it can be selected), unity of types (history, in sociocultural terms), and the conditions of existence (necessity or selection). The evolutionary process produces descent with modification or continuity and change in a branching pattern. Within this evolutionary context, Blute examines such factors as competition, conflict, co-operation, human agency, and complexity. She asserts that evolutionary theory can serve as the great synthesizer within the social sciences, encompassing as it does the material and ideal, change and stability, co-operation and conflict, and both biological and sociocultural systems. It is her contention that modern biological evolutionary theory has a rich conceptual apparatus to offer the social sciences, and she predicts that before the close of the century, nothing in the social sciences will make sense except in the light of evolution; it is a world view that will come to be seen as an inclusive metanarrative for all that we do.

Lenski (2005) has remarked upon the robustness of ecological-evolutionary theory: he sees it as a synthesis of previous social theory and notes that it appears to be flexible enough to incorporate new findings while still maintaining its essential structure (138). In my view, the great weakness of ecological-evolutionary theory is the lack of systematic theoretical development of the interrelationships among the material infrastructure, the social structure, and the cultural superstructure of societies. I intend to remedy this here by synthesizing ecological-evolutionary theory with Max Weber’s rationalization theory.⁴ Rationalization occurs in each component of the sociocultural system. In the cultural superstructure, it manifests as the increasing dominance of goal-oriented behaviour over behaviour motivated by values, traditions, and emotions. In the social structure, it is revealed in the increasing functional dominance of formal bureaucratic organization over more informal primary group organization. Both of these assertions are, of course, part of Weber’s theory, as is his position that bureaucracy is but a particular case of rationalization applied to social structures and that bureaucratization promotes the rationalization of the cultural superstructure, which in turn gives positive feedback to the growth of bureaucracy (as explained above, they are in an autocatalytic relationship). Finally, I would add that intensification is also a particular case of rationalization as it is the application of science, experience, observation, and logic in adapting to our natural and social environments. Feedback promoting intensification is provided by a bureaucratizing structure and a rationalizing superstructure of sociocultural systems. Using Lenski’s ecological-evolutionary theory as a starting point, I will attempt in this chapter to outline a broad synthesis that incorporates, orders, and weighs many of the theories and empirical findings of two hundred years of macrosociology.

Lenski begins with a foundation in Malthus and Spencer, and asserts that sociocultural systems are very much a part of the world of nature and are therefore subject to natural law. He argues that human beings and their societies must therefore be understood as biological entities (2005, 33). We have a common genetic heritage, and the societal mode of life is prevalent in our species, as is our dependence on learning (36–37). Like other animal life, humans must adapt to their immediate environment, but unlike other animals, humans have a unique communication tool, language, to aid in their adaptation. “Closely linked to learning and the societal mode of life are the complex and efficient systems of communication that distinguish mammals in general, and primates in particular, from most other species” (37), writes Lenski, going on to point out the importance of communication in the coordination of human actions; human communication is particularly relevant for structural groups and organizations, as well as for the sharing and reinforcement of cultural innovations, beliefs, values, and ideologies. As we will see, the technology that humans have developed to enhance and extend communication systems (first language, then writing, print, and telecommunications) have played an increasingly central role in the speed and spread of the evolutionary process.

Lenski considers our propensity to self-interest and individualism, which often goes against the interests of the social whole, as part of our genetic heritage. He does not attribute this individualism directly to a gene, however, but to the heavy reliance of human beings on learning rather than biological instincts, as observed by Durkheim; as a consequence, differences in experiences, values, and ideologies are bound to develop over time. In other words, the growing division of labour that parallels population and production growth leads to increasingly different social experiences among a society’s population, leading to a growth in individualism and self-interest at the expense of the society as a whole (Lenski 2005, 38).

The reliance of humans on learning is central to understanding human behaviour because it is the root cause of the conflict and tensions among us. “Homo sapiens is, by nature (i.e., by genetic endowment), simultaneously a cooperative social animal and an individualistic, self-seeking animal,” writes Lenski (2005, 38). Learning is also central to understanding human societies in that it, and not random genetic mutation, is the primary mechanism by which information and adaptations are discovered and passed on to other individuals, social groups, and societies. “For the first time in evolutionary history,” Lenski notes, “a species had the capacity to acquire vast stores of information that were separate and distinct from the information contained in its genes. Learning and communication could now become tools to be used in a limitless process of information acquisition and cumulation, something never before possible” (41). This is responsible for the unprecedented speed of sociocultural evolution.

For Lenski and other evolutionists, a society is an aggregation of people that is geographically located and politically autonomous, and has a “broad range of cooperative activities” (Lenski 2005, 17). Societies are sociocultural systems with component parts fitting loosely together to form a coherent whole (16, 74). They are loose systems, very imperfect, in that not all parts benefit equally in the distribution of resources. The primary organizational unit of human populations, societies are tremendously variable in terms of their population size, production and consumption of goods, wealth and inequality, division of labour, size of territory, contact with other societies, and access to natural resources. But, despite this variability, Lenski also recognizes a “global system” consisting of the totality of human societies and their interrelationships.

Environment-population-production relationships are the infrastructural foundation of these sociocultural systems. According to Lenski, infrastructural relationships largely determine structural relationships within the system, and both of these types of relationship in turn largely determine cultural ideas and ideologies. Lenski (2005, 21, 83) identifies the basic subsistence strategy of a society—its technology and labour techniques in drawing energy out of the environment—as being strongly related to a variety of other important characteristics of the society. Subsistence technology, he states, is directly correlated with a society’s demographic characteristics (population level and growth, and age and sex ratios) and its division of labour. And these characteristics have a direct effect upon energy budgets, the production and consumption of goods and services, and the levels of inequality in power, privilege, and wealth within and between societies.

Forces for change within a society come primarily from environmental-infrastructural relationships or from contact with other sociocultural systems. For Lenski, sociocultural change is often rooted in changes in the environment caused by spontaneous natural forces (such as ice ages) or human activities (pollution, resource depletion, cultural diffusion). Our ability to reproduce far outweighs our ability to acquire food for our children’s survival; therefore, if population is not held in check, the critical balance between population and resources will soon be upset (117). Because of these limits, Lenski argues, human societies are ever alert to ways to increase the food supply or improve access to other needed resources (58). The human tendency to exploit resources beyond the capacity of environmental renewal—such as overhunting or deforestation—have led to changes in the environment necessitating adaptive changes in socio-cultural systems (61).

As we saw in the previous chapter, Weber, in his historical exploration, identifies the environmental problem of the depletion of England’s forests as resulting in turning to coal for fuel in the smelting of iron. Weber saw this environmental change as being largely responsible for seminal technological innovations such as the coking of coal and the steam engine, and ultimately for the Industrial Revolution itself.⁵ We also reviewed Ester Boserup’s (1965) work on the relationships between population and agricultural production. In all these analyses, environmental-infrastructural relationships play a central role in the process of sociocultural evolution. This is also true of the intensification within systems of production (hunting and gathering, horticultural, agrarian, or industrial) and in the transitions between production systems.

The first great shift in production technology occurred with the domestication of plants and animals, the transition from hunting-and-gathering to horticultural societies. For the first time in social evolution, humans were able to produce and store food beyond what was immediately needed for subsistence: they were able to create a surplus. Also, horticulture allowed for a more settled way of life and therefore for the accumulation of goods. All of this, of course, is essential for the growth of population, an increased division of labour and inequality, and, eventually, the rise of the state (Lenski 2005, 95).

According to Lenski, a society’s technology is the most important component of the sociocultural system, for technology impacts all other parts of that system. “This should not be surprising, however,” he writes, “since technology is information about the ways in which the resources of the environment may be used to satisfy human needs and desires. In other words, it is the critical interface between the biophysical environment and all the other components of sociocultural systems, and therefore influences virtually every aspect of human life” (63). Technology is our main adaptive mechanism to a changing environment, and technological innovation has come to largely replace genetic mutation in our species (64).⁶ Technological change is cumulative, and as it accumulates, “there is an inherent tendency for the rate of innovation in a society to accelerate as its store of technological information increases” because the store of technological information provides fuel for further invention (66). Also, like many macro theorists before him, Lenski posits that one primary impact of technological change is to promote the growth of organizations (such as corporations and government) and cultural belief systems and ideologies (such as capitalism and values of efficiency), all of which promote further technological and social change (64–67).

In addition to the infrastructural-environmental foundation of sociocultural systems, Lenski integrates another critical factor into his evolutionary theory: the relations of a society to other societies. Marvin Harris and many other macro theorists often focus on the development of “pristine changes” within a society—changes that occur in the absence of contact with other sociocultural systems. For example, it is widely theorized in the literature that the development of agriculture occurred independently in five to seven different areas of the world beginning about fifteen thousand years ago. It was from these centres that agriculture spread to the rest of the world. If, as the evidence indicates, genetically modern humans have been on earth for one million years, living in hunting-and-gathering societies for almost all of that time, the sudden independent domestication of plants and animals within a comparatively short time span (the last 1.5 percent of human existence) requires a theory of process rather than individual discovery to explain this development, and ecological-evolutionary theory does an admirable job describing this process. Aside from the five to seven areas in which agriculture developed independently, all other societies learned agriculture from neighbouring societies. Cultural diffusion therefore appears to be a much more common mechanism of social change than pristine innovation (Lenski 2005, 71).

The biological and geological resources of different areas of the earth vary widely, and this diversity makes for differences in the potential for development among societies (60). Differences in climate, available plants and animals for hunting and gathering, and available species suitable for domestication all lead to differences in population level, technological development, and the extent of the division of labour. And these environmental limitations and constraints are passed on, of course, to structural and cultural features of societies. Also of note, Lenski states, are constraints imposed by a society’s sociocultural environment. Location is critical, particularly before the advent of modern communication and transportation systems that allow humans to transcend distance and geographical barriers. Societies located on major trade routes between other societies would benefit the most from cultural contact; societies geographically isolated by mountains, deserts, oceans, or distance would be the least developed (61–62).

Because of their systemic character, the conservative nature of the socialization process, and the slowness of change in the physical environment, past societies had a built-in resistance to change (70). But while continuity and tradition dominated societies throughout our past, change has become a pervasive feature of modern life (71–72). Because of the cumulative nature of technological innovation in the past ten thousand years, and especially in the past two hundred, the earth’s population has exploded, causing a host of changes in other parts of sociocultural systems: an explosion in the amount of per capita energy use, intensified division of labour, and soaring growth in the production of goods and services. “Not surprisingly,” Lenski writes, “these trends are paralleled by trends in the accumulation of wealth in general and of capital goods in particular. Their rate of increase has been especially explosive in recent millennia, since accumulation was all but impossible until the beginnings of plant cultivation allowed for a more settled way of life. And, finally, the volume of illth, or waste and injurious products (e.g., harmful drugs), has also grown exponentially in recent times” (27–28).

Inequality in wealth, power, prestige, and privilege also grew along with this intensifying infrastructure, although absolute limits of inequality may have been reached in early industrial societies (Lenski 2005, 30). Lenski provides evidence that inequality peaked in agrarian or perhaps in early industrial societies and is now on a decline (although still very high). The evidence for this decline in the past hundred years or so is fairly substantial, but it should be noted that inequality in wealth and income appears to be once more on the rise, particularly in hyperindustrial societies. (We will look at this, as well as inequality between societies, in much greater detail in the final chapter.) Population growth also appears to have peaked in the late 1960s, and the rate of growth has been in decline in most societies since then (although world population levels are still projected to rise over this century). In addition, there has been a sharp increase in the size of societies, now averaging twenty to thirty million, as well as a growth in territorial size and complexity of social structures (29).

Lenski and other materialists view structural and ideal factors as dependent upon the material base of a society. Change begins in the infrastructure of sociocultural systems and often affects elements of the structure and superstructure. These structural and superstructural elements may well influence infrastructural change—they may serve to extinguish, dampen, or sometimes amplify and promote the change, or to channel the change in a specific direction—but these are secondary effects; when examining sociocultural change, the materialist first looks to the material base upon which social structure and cultural superstructures are erected (Lenski 2005, 132). Lenski recognizes that structural and ideal variables often influence sociocultural evolution, although he sees such factors as subordinate to and constrained by material factors; he does not, however, translate these relationships into general theoretical principles (128).⁷

While Lenski posits a growing complexity of social structure and superstructure as a result of sociocultural evolution, he declines to characterize this change any further. Weber and his followers, however, see the drift of structural and superstructural change as part of the rationalization process.⁸ Rationalization is generally defined as the process by which modes of precise calculation based on observation and reason increasingly dominate the social world. Weber posits that rationalization results in a pattern of thought that increasingly replaces tradition, emotion, and values as motivators of human behaviour. His rationalization theory, however, does not propose some ideal that was driving human evolution; rather, Weber considers rationalization as a mode of thought that gains dominance because of developments in material and structural conditions. These changes include the growing production of goods, increasingly complex production techniques and technologies, growing populations competing for scarce resources, an increasing division of labour, and a consequent growth in state and corporate bureaucracies at the expense of kinship, community, religious, and other primary groups (Weber [1946] 1958, 209–30).

In other words, changes in material conditions are pushing people to increasingly use observation, logic, and rational calculation (rather than tradition, emotion, and universal values) to adapt to changing natural and social environments. In response to a depleting natural environment, humans adapt by expanding their use of science (a supremely rational enterprise based on observation and logic) to develop technology and labour techniques; in response to problems of organization, humans increasingly adapt by recourse to both corporate and public bureaucracies (again, ideally rational organization). Living and interacting within these organizations, our behaviour is guided more and more by goal-oriented rational thought rather than traditions, values, and emotions. The most important carriers of rationality in the social structures of modern societies are, of course, economic and government bureaucracies. As social structures become dominated by the expansion and centralization of such bureaucratic structures, according to Weberians, goal-oriented rational thinking becomes the predominant motivator of human action, the primary manner in which we navigate and interpret our world, thus promoting further bureaucratization of social structure and intensification of infrastructure.

One of the major characteristics of all bureaucracy is its hierarchical organization. Elite hierarchies exist within the structure of societies and wield great power and influence on infrastructural relationships. Because of their relationship to the technologies of production, some individuals and groups benefit more than others. “To say that a society adapts to its environment in a certain way,” explains Lenski (2005, 74), “does not mean that the process is beneficial to all members. In class-structured societies, wars of conquest have often been rewarding for dominant classes but costly for others, just as actions that benefit the dominant religious or ethnic group in a pluralistic society may be harmful to minorities.” Institutional structures (and the elite who dominate these organizations) have a strong influence on cultural ideas and ideologies, and these cultural ideas provide motivation for human behaviour, consequently affecting both social structure and infrastructure. However, although ecological-evolutionary theory recognizes the role of structural and ideal factors in determining the speed and direction of change, it insists upon first looking at the material factors that play the most critical role in sociocultural evolution (78).

While we must necessarily place great emphasis upon the fast pace of sociocultural change in recent years, it is stunning to contemplate the slow, cumulative nature of sociocultural change throughout human history. For most of our time on earth—all but the last 2.5 percent of hominid history, according to Lenski—the archaeological record indicates that technology, population, and the division of labour remained remarkably stable. As he observes, “Patterns of life in the global system, insofar as they can be inferred from the archaeological record, persisted not merely for centuries and millennia, but for tens and hundreds of millennia” (2005, 30). Despite the impact of industrialization, the vast majority of individual human societies have changed very little over the course of their existence, whereas the global system of societies has changed greatly in the past ten thousand years (62–70). What caused that comparatively sudden change? In addition to subsistence technology, Lenski ascribes a special role to technologies of communications and transportation, which are responsible for increasing the interactions among and between sociocultural systems while also allowing humans to store information more reliably and permanently. Communication revolutions significantly increase the speed and spread of innovation within and between societies and preserve these innovations for future generations (62). Max Weber ([1946] 1958, 213) and C. Wright Mills ([1951] 1973, 334–36) also ascribe a special significance to communication technology in the expansion of bureaucracy.

In addition to communication revolutions, there has been a revolution in transportation systems. Thus, an important variable is the historical era in which the society exists: it is quite a different matter being an agrarian society in 1492 and being an agrarian society today. The difference can be attributed to constant contact through trade and communication networks with industrial and hyperindus-trial societies. Through increased contact brought about by business, diplomacy, war, international sports, education, missionaries, and tourists, the world has been brought into ever closer interaction (Lenski 2005, 112–13). “As a result, there has been a remarkable tendency throughout the entire global system toward cultural convergence around the norms and practices of industrial societies, even in societies where the process of industrialization has barely begun” (105). However, although the pace of change has increased markedly in recent times, it must be emphasized that this change is cumulative in nature. Jet airplanes, for example, incorporate “principles of metallurgy, the wheel, the chair, the window, the handle, numbers, letters and more” (31). The evolutionary process is one of cumulative change—a process by which older elements are absorbed and incorporated into more intricate and complex systems. For this reason, a society’s past adaptations to its environment very much influence its present and future.

Throughout human history, there have probably been over one million different societies; Lenski (2005, 74) posits that, at the end of the hunting-and-gathering era, there were between 100,000 and 300,000 societies in existence.⁹ Today, there are at most two hundred, and these are highly unrepresentative of the total throughout history. As Lenski points out, “Societies today are, on average, far larger, far more complex, far more productive, far more powerful, and far more subject to change than societies of the past” (74). This is due to the process of intersocietal selection described earlier, in which societies that have adapted to changing environments by developing more productive technologies grow in population size, structural complexity, and economic and military power and absorb societies that have maintained more traditional patterns (Nolan and Lenski 2011, 59–61). Sociocultural evolution is thus a two-track process. At the level of the individual society, a society adapts to its changing natural and social environments, which, in combination with its history, produces innovative adaptations. This individual societal evolution is responsible for the incredible diversity of sociocultural systems. However, some of these adaptations are passed on to other societies in the global system through cultural contact or conquest and become critical factors in the intersocietal selection process. Lenski labels this latter process “general” sociocultural evolution, which is far more directional than individual societal evolution, leading to larger populations, increased use of energy and productivity, and greater division of labour and structural complexity (Lenski 2005, 111, 117). It is, of course, this intersocietal selection process that has advanced the spread of intensification, bureaucratization, and rationalization. Since sociocultural evolution takes place at the levels of both the individual society and the global system of societies, both processes must be taken into account in examining sociocultural systems and their evolution.

JARED DIAMOND’S ENVIRONMENTALISM

While Lenski has been testing various aspects of ecological-evolutionary theory since the early 1960s, independent tests of some of its postulates have been provided by Jared Diamond’s more recent work. Diamond, whose work is very consistent with ecological-evolutionary theory, is a public intellectual who has made social evolution accessible to a broad public. In Ecological-Evolutionary Theory (2005, 145), Lenski strongly recommends Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997). While noting that Diamond does not label his analysis as ecological-evolutionary theory, “most of the chapters in Guns, Germs, and Steel provide valuable further tests of the principles on which ecological-evolutionary theory is based.” What is most interesting about Jared Diamond, apart from the wealth of ethnographic and historical examples he brings to his explanations, is how closely his underlying theory parallels the work of such social scientists as Lenski, Marvin Harris, and Stephen Sanderson. Diamond’s graduate education was in physiology, with a specialty in evolutionary biology and biogeography. To this specialty, Diamond has added a broad familiarity with languages, history, and the social sciences.¹⁰ He posits that characteristics of the environment—physical, biological, and social—play a dominant role in sociocultural stability and change in human societies. What he demonstrates is that these environmental characteristics largely condition what is possible in terms of production and population, and that these environmental and infrastructural factors combined affect not only individual sociocultural systems but the global system of societies as well. Lenski and Harris take a more social scientific tack in their explicit development of the social theory that guides their analyses and then test that theory through further analysis. Diamond’s guiding theory is much less explicit, and as a result, his writing has the feel of history and ethnography. However, there is a theoretical framework underlying his analysis, one that is quite consistent with ecological-evolutionary theory.

Diamond first focuses on what he calls “ultimate factors” in explaining the vast differences in social development among societies. These ultimate factors are all environmental in nature: geography, soil fertility, plant and animal availability, and climate. Other factors that, according to Diamond, lead to inequalities between societies—population, production, social organization, ideologies—all come into play in his analysis as “proximate causes,” strongly influenced (if not determined) by environmental ultimate factors. But the differences between Diamond and other ecological-evolutionary theorists are ones of semantics: the social scientists and the biologist all begin with environmental-infrastructural relationships and focus upon how these factors profoundly affect the rest of the sociocultural system.

How then does Diamond explain the great inequalities between sociocultural systems in the modern world? What explains the patterns of wealth and poverty we see between societies? The short answer is that technological and political differences around the year 1500 determined this pattern of inequality between societies today, but this merely begs the question. Why were some societies so much more technologically advanced, populated, and politically and militarily organized than others in 1500? How did Europeans come to have guns and steel swords, while in other cultures people continued to arm themselves with wooden clubs and weapons of stone (15–16)? Jared Diamond’s short answer to these questions is that the speed and course of sociocultural development is determined by the physical, biological, and social environment of that sociocultural system (25). We now turn to a slightly longer version of Diamond’s answer—specifically, an explanation of how these factors are directly related to population size and density, division of labour, and technological development.

The evolutionary sequence that culminated in Homo sapiens unfolded over a period of about seven million years. For the first five or six million years of that history, human ancestors remained in Africa. The species known as Homo erectus was the first to leave Africa, some one to two million years ago, and Homo sapiens diverged from Homo erectus as a distinct species about half a million years ago (Diamond 1997, 36–37). What is most remarkable is the relatively unchanging character of the technology associated with early humans: tools were primitive and clumsy, and little change in shape or design occurred over long periods of time. Human history finally “takes off,” Diamond notes, about fifty thousand years ago with what is commonly termed the “Great Leap Forward,” in which artifacts became more abundant, intricately designed, and varied (39). Diamond attributes this advance to the development of the human voice box, making sophisticated language possible, which in turn makes culture possible (40).

Many dispute this, believing that language evolved well before this time. Spencer Wells (2010) points to evidence that the Great Leap was much more gradual than previously thought. Recent discoveries of decorative art and artifacts in Africa provide evidence that the changes began more than seventy thousand years ago, only reaching full flower through selective pressure on human populations brought about by environmental change. About seventy-five thousand years ago, one of the largest volcanoes in the past two million years erupted. Mount Toba in northern Sumatra spewed more than three thousand times the ash than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. As a result of Toba’s eruption, global temperatures were lowered “somewhere between nine and twenty-seven degrees Fahrenheit” (97). This was then followed by about a thousand-year period of “substantially cooler temperatures, among the coldest of the last ice age” (99). Not only did Africa become considerably cooler, but it also became much drier since water was locked up in the northern ice sheets.

These environmental changes, Wells believes, put substantial pressure on human populations. He cites genetic evidence suggesting that the total number of our direct ancestors alive at this point was only about two thousand to ten thousand individuals. Wells characterizes the artifacts of the time as evidence of a “novel way” of thought, indicative of ability for abstract thought, problem solving, and rapid adaptation to new situations in an innovative manner (102). He and others posit that it was only during the last ice age, when the human population was stressed to near extinction, that selective pressures on that population produced humans that could “make use of their ability to solve problems in novel ways” (99).¹¹ Humans who had developed the ability to adapt through observation, experience, and abstract thought, and thus to devise technologies and develop new skills to exploit their environment, were those who survived and reproduced in the harsh African environment of the time; it was this small cadre of survivors from which all modern humans descend. Regardless of the causes of the Great Leap, the end of the ice age brought an extension of the human range: out of Africa and into Eurasia to Australia and New Guinea, armed with new technology and sophisticated culture.

Another significant first with the colonization of Australia/New Guinea (a single landmass at that time) was the extinction of the mega-fauna. Diamond is a strong advocate of Paul C. Martin’s hypothesis that the early colonists killed most of the large animals of Australia/New Guinea shortly after arriving on the continent from the Eurasian landmass. Martin (and others since) attributes this to the fact that these large animals had never before encountered humans and, consequently, were relatively easy prey when the first Australians crossed the ocean channels (cited in Diamond 1997, 41).¹² This is because of the phenomenon of co-evolution. Over the course of several million years, animals on the Eurasian landmass evolved with humans as part of the natural environment. As humans slowly developed better hunting skills, their prey developed both a fear of the predator and better defences against the hunt. Australian mammals evolved with no such fear or defences. A similar fate is posited for many of North and South America’s megafauna that first came into contact with humans some thirty thousand years later (46). The extinction of megafauna is one of the prime examples of the activities of human populations disrupting and depleting natural systems, thus necessitating social adaptation to the new environment. These extinctions had significant consequences for subsequent sociocultural development in these regions; wild mammals that might have been available for domestication were eliminated (47).¹³

According to Diamond (1997, 98), agriculture originated independently in five areas of the world: the Near East (or the Fertile Crescent), China, Mesoamerica, the Andes, and what is now the eastern United States. While several other areas are candidates for this distinction, in these five areas, the evidence for independent development is overwhelming. Most other areas appear to have developed agriculture as a result of diffusion from other societies or through the invasion of farmers or herders. Others failed to acquire agriculture until modern times. Through the use of environmental variables, Diamond attempts to explain this pattern. Why did the domestication of plants and animals first occur where and when it did? Why did it not occur in additional areas that are suitable for the growing of crops or the herding of animals? Finally, why did some peoples who lived in areas ecologically suitable for agriculture or herding fail to either develop or acquire agriculture until modern times?

Diamond’s analysis of the origins of agriculture differs little from those of Harris or Lenski, although he presents some interesting details regarding the transitions. Like Harris and Lenski, Diamond posits that the transition was the result not of conscious choice but rather of thousands of small cost-benefit decisions on the part of individuals over centuries: “The underlying reason why this transition was piecemeal is that food production systems evolved as a result of the accumulation of many separate decisions about allocating time and effort” (107). Echoing Harris, Diamond suggests that many considerations go into this decision-making process, including the simple satisfaction of hunger, the craving for specific foods, and the need for protein, fat, or salt. Also consistent with Harris, Diamond states that people concentrate on foods that will give them the biggest payoff (taste, calories, and protein) in return for the least time and effort (107–8).¹⁴ Throughout the transition, hunting and gathering competed directly with food production strategies for the time and energy of individuals within the population. Only when the benefits of food production outweighed those of hunting and gathering did people invest more time in that strategy (109).

What finally gave food production the advantage? It was not that food production led to an easier lifestyle. Studies indicate that farmers and herders spend far more time working for their food than do hunters and gatherers (109). Nor are people attracted by abundance: most studies indicate that peasants and herders do not eat as well as hunters and gatherers. Diamond proposes several factors that led some hunters and gatherers to gradually make the shift. The primary factor may have been a decline in the availability of wild foods; with the receding of the glaciers, many prey species became depleted or extinct. A second factor is an increasing range and thus availability of domesticable wild plants: “For instance, climate changes at the end of the Pleistocene in the Fertile Crescent greatly expanded the area habitat of wild cereals, of which huge crops could be harvested in a short time” (110). A third factor, according to Diamond, is an improvement in the technologies necessary for food production—specifically, tools “for collecting, processing, and storing wild food” (110). The fourth factor—prominent in the analyses of Diamond, Malthus, Boserup, Harris, and Lenski—is the relationship between population and food production, which rise in tandem. Diamond calls this relationship “autocatalytic”—a gradual increase in population forces people to obtain more food, and as food becomes more plentiful, more children survive into adulthood. Once hunters and gatherers began to make the switch to food production, their increased yields impelled population growth, thus causing them to produce even more food, perpetuating the autocatalytic relationship (111). A final factor noted by Diamond is the expansion of territory by food producers. This expansion was made possible by their much greater population densities and certain other advantages enjoyed by food producers compared to their hunting-and-gathering neighbours (112).

While Diamond has not turned over any new ground in his analysis of the agricultural revolution, he has certainly produced a much richer description of the domestication process than previous attempts. For example, Diamond explains in interesting detail how the early domestication of plants could have proceeded without conscious thought on the part of early farmers. Plant domestication, he explains, is the process by which early farmers selected seeds from plants that were particularly useful for human consumption, thereby causing changes in the plant’s genetic makeup. But it was not a one-way process: when humans selected certain seeds over others, they were changing the environmental conditions of the plants themselves—the conditions, that is, in which certain plants thrived and propagated (123). According to Diamond, plants that produced bigger seeds, or a more attractive taste for humans, were initially chosen in the gathering process and provided the first seeds planted in early gardens (117). The new conditions then favoured some of these seeds over others (123). The conditions in the garden, as well as the farmer’s unconscious and conscious selection of seeds for sowing the following spring, gradually changed the genetic structure of domesticated plants; domesticated varieties are therefore often starkly different than their wild ancestors.

Through this process, Diamond notes, hunters and gatherers domesticated almost all of the crops that we consume today; not one major new domesticate has been added since Roman times (128). Furthermore, only a dozen plant species account for over 80 percent of the world’s annual crop yields. “With so few crops in the world, all of them domesticated thousands of years ago, it’s less surprising that many areas of the world had no wild native plants at all of outstanding potential” (132).

Diamond proposes a very similar process and conclusion regarding the domestication of animals. Animal domestication, he explains, is the process by which early farmers selectively bred animals that were more useful for humans, thereby causing changes in the animal’s genetic makeup. Although 148 wild, large, herbivorous mammals were available for domestication, only 14 were ever domesticated: the “major five” (sheep, goats, cattle, pigs, and horses) and the “minor nine” (Arabian and Bactrian camels, llamas and alpacas, donkeys, reindeer, water buffalo, yaks, Bali cattle, and mithan) (160–61). Why did so few of the 148 become domesticated? Why did so many fail? Because, Diamond answers, not just any wild animal can be domesticated; to be successful, a candidate must possess six specific characteristics. Lacking any one of these would make all efforts at domestication futile (169).

The first factor required for successful domestication concerns the diet of the animal. To be valuable, the animal must consume a diet that efficiently converts readily available plant life to meat. A second factor is growth rate: to be worth raising, the animal must grow relatively quickly. Animals that take ten to twenty years to reach mature size represent far too great an investment for the average farmer. Third is ease of breeding—many animals have problems breeding in captivity, requiring range and privacy that stymies domestication efforts. A fourth factor is disposition: animals with a nasty disposition toward humans are much too dangerous to domesticate. A fifth characteristic is tendency to panic: many species are extremely nervous and quick to flee when confronted with a threat. The sixth and final characteristic that is necessary for a domestic relationship with humans regards herd structure. “Almost all species of domesticated large mammals,” writes Diamond, “prove to be ones whose wild ancestors shared three social characteristics: they live in herds; they maintain a well-developed dominance hierarchy among herd members; and the herds occupy overlapping home ranges rather than mutually exclusive territories” (172).

Eurasian people, befitting their large landmass and its environmental diversity, started out with many more potential domesticates than people on other continents. Australia and the Americas lost most of their potential domesticates through either climate change or the actions of early settlers to these lands. In addition, a much higher percentage of the Eurasian candidates “proved suitable for domestication” than of those in Africa, Australia, or the Americas (174–75).

Why did food production first appear in the Fertile Crescent? The primary advantage of this area was its Mediterranean climate of mild, wet winters and long summers, making it ideal for crop production. It also possessed a number of wild ancestors of crops that were already highly productive and growing in large stands in the wild (136). And finally, the Fertile Crescent contained four large herbivores that fit the profile of domestication, as well as several well-suited plants. “Thanks to this availability of suitable wild mammals and plants, early people of the Fertile Crescent could quickly assemble a potent and balanced biological package for intensive food production” (141–42). Other early originators had similar (though not quite so varied) biological advantages and physical and climatic conditions suitable for agricultural production. In the New World, because of the paucity of wild plants suitable for domestication and the almost complete lack of big herbivores for meat or traction, the coming of agriculture was much delayed and, once started, much slower to develop. One cannot readily imagine people choosing agriculture over hunting and gathering in their cost-benefit decision making when their only available domesticates were sumpweed or squash. In such cases, agriculture remained a supplement to the basic hunting-and-gathering lifestyle for much longer periods.

Another critical factor in the rise of food production proposed by Jane Jacobs, author of The Economy of Cities (1969), focuses upon population density and trade. Jacobs argues that domestication must have first occurred in the early trading centres of hunting-and-gathering societies and then spread from there. There is overwhelming archaeological evidence for the existence of trading centres among pre-agricultural hunting-and-gathering peoples. These urban centres of up to approximately two thousand people traded amber, shells, obsidian, and other desirable goods to hunters and gatherers in the region. Settlements such as these have been found throughout the world, and trade goods have been found far from their source (40). It was to these early trading centres that hunters and gatherers brought animals and grains to trade for materials not available to them in their home regions.

Among the goods that hunters and gatherers brought for trade were wild animals. It was in keeping wild animals for eventual consumption, Jacobs posits, that the selection process of domestication began. With an abundance of animals coming in for trade, animal stewards were given the task of keeping animals alive until they are needed for food. When the time for slaughter came, the first animals chosen were the dangerous carnivores, followed by those herbivores that had mean dispositions, refused to feed, or were difficult to manage. The more docile animals would be saved for last, sometimes giving birth in captivity. Jacobs imagines the scene thus: “They have no conception of animal domestication, nor of categories of animals that can or cannot be domesticated. The stewards are intelligent men, and are fully capable of solving problems and of catching insights from experience.… The only reason that second, third or fourth generation captives live long enough to breed yet another generation is that they happen to be the easiest to keep during times of plenty” (23–24). Over generations, after fits and starts in which the breeding stock may well have been sacrificed in time of need, a permanent system of domestication of a species is achieved.

In a similar vein, Jacobs theorizes that plant domestication also required the existence of urban trading centres in order to occur. It took generations of selection to turn wild grasses into the grains we know today, but only under the following conditions could it have happened at all:

1. Seeds that normally do not grow together must come together nevertheless, frequently and consistently over considerable periods of time.
2. In that same place, variants must consistently be under the informed, close observation of people able to act relevantly in response to what they see.
3. That same place must be well secured against food shortages so that in time the seed grain can become sacrosanct; otherwise the whole process of selective breeding will be repeatedly aborted before it can amount to anything. In short, prosperity is a prerequisite. (27)

It was from these trading centres, Jacobs proposes, that domestication gradually spread to outlying regions. Her hypothesis that population density and trade over large areas are necessary preconditions for the development of domestication is part of her broader theory that urbanization and contact among sociocultural systems are key factors in the intensification process. This perspective is, of course, perfectly in keeping with the principles of ecological-evolutionary theory.

Diamond suggests that the environment of Eurasia favoured not only early domestication but also the spread of agriculture from pristine areas of origin to other societies. Recall that most societies do not develop agriculture on their own but rather receive it through conquest or other cultural contact. The Eurasian continent has several advantages over Africa and the Americas in this regard. The foremost reason for the rapid spread of crops in Eurasia, according to Diamond, is that the Eurasian continent has an east-west axis—the bulk of the land mass stretches east to west rather than north to south. Similar latitudes, Diamond (1997, 183) reasons, share the same seasonal variations, length of days, and, often, climate. Thus, plants first cultivated in one area, adapted as they are to such factors of latitude as growing season and length of day, can easily be cultivated in areas east or west of the original site. The axis of the Americas and Africa, on the other hand, is north-south. Corn that was first domesticated in the Mexican highlands, with its long days and long growing season, could not readily spread to areas of the eastern United States or Canada. To be grown in these new latitudes, corn had to be redomesticated for these climates through a very long process of human selection (184). There are additional geographical barriers to the spread of agriculture, barriers that also came into play in the diffusion of other technologies among societies: desert regions, tropical jungles, and mountains played a much more prominent role in preventing or slowing down the spread of agriculture in the Americas and Africa than in Eurasia, where such barriers are considerably less formidable.

Returning to the question about inequality between societies raised at the beginning of this section, Diamond considers the acquisition, timing, and spread of agriculture the ultimate cause of global inequalities in the fifteenth century but not one of the proximate causes. Proximate or immediate causes were the superiority of Eurasian technology, particularly their guns, steel swords, and armour; the centralized political governments of Eurasian nations, which allowed the marshalling of armadas of ships and armies; and the more lethal germs carried by the conquerors. How are these proximate factors related to agriculture?

First and foremost, there is a strong relationship between food production and population. As noted earlier, many more people can be sustained in a given area through farming than can be supported through hunting and gathering. With the development of agriculture, an autocatalytic relationship between production and population is set in motion, with each one stimulating the other. Before the development of agriculture, all human beings lived in small band-type societies—communal societies with little inequality, a system of reciprocity or sharing of food and resources, and little division of labour. While often ruled by a headman, such “rulers” were little more than the man with the most influence because of his hunting prowess or wisdom; he was, we might say, the first among equals. With population growth, Diamond (1997, 271) argues, social organization moved from loose band-type societies to tribes and, with further growth in numbers, to chiefdoms. The main reason for these changes was the need for regulation and control of the increasing numbers of people. In earlier band and tribal societies, many of the members of the group were related, making “police, laws, and other conflict-resolving institutions of larger societies unnecessary, since any two villagers getting into an argument will share many kin, who will apply pressure on them to keep it from becoming violent.” Other reasons for the shift include the growing impossibility of communal decision making in large populations and the need for some specialization and redistribution of goods among societal members (286–87).

In chiefdoms, one person comes to exercise a monopoly on the use of force, occupying an office that becomes hereditary; the chief thus becomes the central authority figure within the society, making all of the important decisions and, over time, taking on more power, prestige, and wealth. Rather than rely on the generalized reciprocity of hunting-and-gathering bands and tribes, chiefdoms begin a more redistributive economy in which tribute goes to the chief, some of which is then redistributed to other members of society in times of need. As population size increases, chiefs surround themselves with more functionaries to more effectively separate the commoners from the surplus, and more and more of the surplus is held back to reward these functionaries and to provide luxuries for the elite.

States differ from chiefdoms in that centralized control is much more extensive, the division of labour more specialized, and economic inequality and redistribution within the society much more extreme (279). States also have considerably more extensive bureaucracies than do chiefdoms; increasingly, rule is based on written laws and achieved rather than ascribed status (280). Echoing Lenski, Diamond (1997, 281) states that “over the past 13,000 years the predominant trend in human society has been the replacement of smaller, less complex units by larger, more complex ones.” The reason for this long-term evolutionary trend is the advantage that states enjoy in population size, weaponry, technology, specialized armies, and centralized coordination and control.

States—which, according to Diamond, are merely natural progressions from chiefdoms—“arose around 3700 BC in Mesopotamia and around 300 BC in Mesoamerica, over 2,000 years ago in the Andes, China, and Southeast Asia, and over 1,000 years ago in West Africa” (278). The primary reason for the rise of states, according to Diamond, is population growth: the range of population for chiefdoms is a few thousand to perhaps twenty thousand people; a population much bigger than that requires the more centralized coordination and control of a state (279). As we will see in chapter 7, however, the conditions for state formation requires a more extended explanation.

Diamond claims that there is an autocatalytic relationship between intensified food production, population, and societal complexity.¹⁵ First, food production both facilitates and necessitates a sedentary lifestyle, thus allowing for the accumulation of possessions as well as the creation of crafts. Second, intensified food production can be organized to produce a surplus, which can then be used to support a more complex division of labour and social stratification (285). Finally, agricultural production involves seasonal labour. “When the harvest has been stored,” writes Diamond, “the farmers’ labor becomes available for a centralized political authority to harness—in order to build public works advertising state power (such as the Egyptian pyramids), or to build public works that could feed more mouths (such as Polynesian Hawaii’s irrigation systems or fishponds), or to undertake wars of conquest to form larger political entities” (285). Societal complexity, continuing the feedback loop, can then stimulate further intensification of food production.

With population growth and wars of conquest, Diamond maintains, the character of societies began to change. During the hunting-and-gathering era, when population densities were low, conflict between groups often meant that the defeated group would merely move to a new range further removed from the victors. In the intermediate developmental stage of non-intensive food production and consequent moderate population level, there is no place for the defeated to move, but in horticultural societies with little surplus, “the victors have no use for survivors of a defeated tribe, unless to take the women in marriage. The defeated men are killed, and their territory may be occupied by the victors” (291). With intensified food production and high population densities, as with states that produce a surplus of food and have a developed division of labour, the defeated can be used as slaves or the defeated society can be forced to pay tribute to the conquerors.

The most direct line from the ultimate cause of agriculture to a proximate cause is the relationship between raising livestock and lethal germs. “The major killers of humanity throughout our recent history—smallpox, flu, tuberculosis, malaria, plague, measles, and cholera—are infectious diseases that evolved from diseases of animals” (Diamond 1997, 196–97). Eurasian farmers were exposed to these germs from a very early time; many, therefore, developed resistance to these diseases, but they remained carriers. Thus, native populations of the Americas, Australia, and Polynesia were often decimated before guns and steel were used to subjugate them.

In summary, because food production was much more intensive on the Eurasian continent, there was great competition, diffusion, and amalgamation among the states that evolved on this continent. These states became larger in population, more resistant to the diseases carried by domesticates, more sophisticated in terms of technology, and more centralized politically than the tribes, chiefdoms, and early states with which they came into contact in the New World, the Pacific Islands, Africa, and Australia. Thus, when worlds collided, one barely survived. Although Diamond comes from a tradition based in the biological sciences and developed almost in isolation from social theory, his work explores the many relationships among environment, population, and production—as well as the impact of these relationships on the rest of the sociocultural system—and is perfectly consistent with the principles of ecological-evolutionary theory.

ELIZABETH EISENSTEIN’S FOCUS ON THE PRINTING PRESS

While Lenski and Diamond capture the grand sweep of the social evolutionary process, historian Elizabeth Eisenstein (1979) focuses upon a single technological innovation and traces its impact on the rest of sociocultural system. In elaborate detail, she outlines the beginnings of the communications revolution started by the invention of the printing press. I have selected her work for review because she successfully demonstrates two principles of ecological-evolutionary theory: (1) technology is a potent force in sociocultural evolution and often has far-reaching effects throughout the sociocultural system, and (2) communications technology in particular, because it involves both the storage and dissemination of information and data, is an intensifier of the evolutionary process. Modernity, Eisenstein claims, is too indefinite a concept for careful scholarship. Rather, she examines the effects of a communications revolution on a variety of social movements in sixteenth-century Europe. While many look to the discovery and sudden influx of wealth from the New World, or class struggle and the triumph of capitalism, or the scientific revolution, or the schism of Christianity to explain the turmoil and innovation of that century, Eisenstein looks to the printing press as the primary agent of change.

This initial communications revolution has been much overlooked by historians and social scientists, Eisenstein argues, because the cumulative impact of more recent communications technology has largely overshadowed this fundamental shift in the storage and retrieval of information and data. “Since Gutenberg’s day,” she notes, “printed materials have become exceedingly common. They ceased to be newsworthy more than a century ago and have attracted ever less attention the more ubiquitous they have become. But although calendars, maps, time-tables, dictionaries, catalogues, textbooks, and newspapers are taken for granted at present (or even dismissed as old-fashioned by purveyors of novelties) they continue to exert as great an influence on daily life as ever they did before” (1979, 17).

Another reason why the advent of the printing press is largely overlooked as being truly revolutionary is the prevalence of anthropological studies that focus upon the contrast between oral and literate culture, which is very great, but do not properly emphasize the impermanence of scribal records. In early scribal cultures, records often perished in a few generations unless stored or buried in jars (and then were often forgotten). To be preserved over time, such records had to be copied, and such copying was painfully slow and labour intensive, and led to “textual drift” (114). Consequently, records and knowledge gained were often lost or simply not recorded. Printed documents, too, are on perishable materials but can be easily and reliably duplicated and thus preserved in perpetuity. Because of its amazing duplicative powers, print can spread innovation, ideas, maps, drawings, data—indeed, all types of information—through time and space.

Eisenstein claims that, beginning in the 1450s, the impact of the new print technology on medieval life was profound. By 1500, every major city in Europe had at least one printing workshop (43–44). The focus of her historical analysis is on the effects of these early print shops on the social structure and culture of Europe over the next hundred years. Many of these print shops brought together scholars and artisans, and served as a bridge between universities and cities. These workshops were also capitalistic enterprises employing and training new occupational groups, utilizing new technologies, and developing new techniques; print shop owners were constantly seeking new markets to increase their profits and expand their enterprises. Eisenstein describes the shops as serving a coordinating function for scholarly, religious, state, and scientific activities while producing commodities for profit (690). As such, these shops represent a new destabilizing force in Europe, both in their organization and in their products.

Eisenstein also refers to the change in motivation experienced by printers caught up in capitalism. Before the advent of printing, book dealers who served university faculties were also subject to self-interested motivations and competitive drives. But these commercial interests were muted, Eisenstein maintains, compared to the early printers, who had to worry about creditors, employees, and the cost of paper and ink: “The manuscript book dealer did not have to worry about idle machines or striking workmen as did the printer” (58). The consequent increase of overhead, debt, and dependence on machines and skilled and unskilled workers necessarily forced a revolution in the printer-entrepreneur’s mind. His thinking must increasingly have been dominated by finance and technology—he must constantly search for ways to expand his markets in order to increase his profit. In many of these shops, book printing was accompanied by job printing: commercial advertising for the book shops themselves and for other enterprises, official documents and propaganda for the state, seditious materials for radicals and revolutionaries, and documents required by private, church, and state bureaucracies (59). Early printers were in a unique position vis-à-vis other commercial enterprises, Eisenstein asserts, because in seeking to expand their own product line, they also “contributed to, and profited from, the expansion of other commercial enterprises” (60).

But again, Eisenstein lists a variety of motives behind the power of the press in sixteenth-century Europe—among them, profit, evangelism, individual fame, bureaucratic necessity, and the extension of the state’s power. In this sense, Eisenstein states, the press was not a single technological innovation that changed everything but rather an invention that could be used by church and state, capitalists and scholars to further their interests. In a different culture, the technology may have been used for very different ends or perhaps even entirely suppressed. Accordingly, institutional context is important when considering technological innovation, and it specifically points to the importance of the material interests of elites. Early printers were effective change agents, but only in combination with other institutional forces. This function of communication as a catalyst makes printing different from most other innovations (702–3).

The major impact of the printing press, of course, was the marked increase in the number of books available to the reading public. “The fact that identical images, maps and diagrams could be viewed simultaneously by scattered readers constituted a kind of communications revolution in itself” (Eisenstein 1979, 53). Readers had more sources from which to draw and thus a greater diversity of views, facts, contradictions, observations, theories, drawings, illustrations, and maps to heighten their “awareness of anomalies or discontent with inherited schemes” (686). While scribal errors in writing, mathematics, charts, graphs, and inferior maps continued to be printed after the advent of the press, a process had begun to address these errors with more certainty, and much greater confidence could eventually be placed in the accuracy of the record (686, 699).

The long and uneven spread of literacy after the invention of printing occurred over the next several centuries (indeed, is still occurring) and constitutes the most dramatic change associated with the invention of the printing press. A knowledge explosion occurred in the sixteenth century, and although this explosion is often attributed to the discovery of the New World or to the Reformation or the rise of science, Eisenstein maintains that access to a greater variety of books deserves at least equal attention (74). The increase in texts and literacy exposed ever greater numbers of people to classical literature as well as cross-cultural information, new discoveries, religious beliefs, philosophies, fashion, and ways of thinking in contemporaneous societies geographically remote from Europe. Such a sudden abundance of literature—often novel or contradictory to established patterns and thought in such traditional societies—created great intellectual ferment in sixteenth-century Europe.

Printed material, Eisenstein claims, also facilitates problem solving and directly affects the life of the mind (689). Along with Marshall McLuhan, Eisenstein speculates that the format and presentation of books—from scanning lines of print from left to right, to chapter organization, presentation of argument, and arrangement of facts—may well affect the thought patterns of readers (88–89). Printing also helped to codify and standardize languages, thus strengthening national identities as well as the centralization of the state. Finally, printing serves the function of “amplifying and reinforcing” norms, values, beliefs, and ideologies in that it serves to repeat “identical chapters and verses, anecdotes and aphorism, drawn from very limited scribal sources” (126). This does not happen from sheer duplication—although that contributes to the phenomenon—but rather because writers tend to be great readers and, for the past five hundred years, have “jointly transmitted certain old messages with augmented frequency even while separately reporting on new events or spinning out new ideas” (126–27).

Printing also contributed to the fragmentation of Christianity. With the advent of print, religious divisions became more permanent. Heresy, and its condemnation, Eisenstein (1979, 118–19) writes, became more fixed in the minds of followers, religious edicts more “visible” and “irrevocable.” The study of scripture became more individualized and fragmented the religious beliefs and experiences of Christians, helping to start civil wars, heresy trials, and intolerance of other beliefs, a result quite opposite to the effect of printing on science (701).

The advent of printing also contributed greatly to the spread of individualism in the West. A scribal culture, because of the dearth of written materials, required communal gatherings to receive messages from government or church. With the advent of the mass duplication of printed materials, these messages could be given directly to individual readers. This led to a weakening of the social bond with local groups but gave opportunity for allegiance and attachment to larger collectives (say, the nation-state or socialist organizations) and for “vicarious participation” in distant events. “Printed materials encouraged silent adherence to causes whose advocates could not be found in any one parish and who addressed an invisible public from afar. New forms of group identity began to compete with an older, more localized nexus of loyalties” (132).

Over time, printers began to differentiate the markets for their printed materials to better target the reading tastes of males and females, newly created occupational groups (due to an increasing division of labour), and different age groups. The latter, combined with newly established schools for youth, served to create distinctive youth cultures for children and, somewhat later, adolescents (133–34).¹⁶ In general, the marketing of printed materials to specific groups served to further differentiate them from one another in terms of their social experiences, beliefs, interests, ideologies, and values, a process that has been “amplified and reinforced” as the communications revolution has continued (158–59).

While Eisenstein’s focus is on the communications revolution that occurred in sixteenth-century Europe, the revolution has continued with the development of metal presses, the harnessing of steam and then electricity to the presses, photography, telegraph, telephone, Linotype, radio, television, and computers. “Since the advent of movable type, an enhanced capacity to store and retrieve, preserve and transmit has kept pace with an enhanced capacity to create and destroy, to innovate or outmode. The somewhat chaotic appearance of modern Western culture owes as much, if not more, to the duplicative powers of print as it does to the harnessing of new powers in the past century” (704).

This chapter began by detailing Gerhard Lenski’s ecological-evolutionary theory, calling attention to the fact that many social scientists have contributed to his synthesis. I then demonstrated the usefulness of the theory through the independent writings of an evolutionary biologist and a social historian. The empirical work of Lenski, Harris, Robert Carneiro, Stephen Sanderson, and a host of other social scientists could also be detailed, but I believe the following points have been made:

• Macrosociology is steeped in evolutionism.
• Its practitioners share much common ground regarding the material foundations of sociocultural systems and the primary mechanisms of the evolutionary process.
• Its explanations are both powerful and wide in scope; using a few logically consistent principles, they are able to explain much about the origins, maintenance, and change of sociocultural systems.

We will now turn our focus to some of the structural and cultural changes that this evolutionary process has wrought.