Theory of Indivisibility: Evolutionary Origins of Ownership
This post corresponds with Episode 11 of my podcast Theory of Indivisibility, where I talk about the evolution of ownership. Be sure to check it out on Google Podcast, Apple Podcast, Spotify, or Stitcher!
In current times, we think about land ownership and other forms of private property as the norm, however, ownership is a relatively new concept. Just like power-over, patriarchy, and religion, ownership evolved over many years due to the changes in human societies set in motion by the agricultural revolution approximately 10,000 years ago.
In today’s transcription, we will explore questions like:
- What are the evolutionary origins of ownership in human societies?
- How and why did ownership become necessary?
To create context for these questions we need to look at what preceded ownership. Let’s start from the beginning.
The following insights will include direct quotes from Dr. Robert Gilman’s article titled “The Idea of Owning Land” and some of my thoughts to add additional context.
Our feelings about ownership have very deep roots. Most animal life has a sense of territory — a place to be at home and to defend. This territoriality seems to be associated with the oldest part of the brain, known as the reptilian brain, and forms a biological basis for our sense of property. This is closely associated with our sense of security and our instinctual “fight or flight” responses, all of which create a powerful emotional dimension around our experience of ownership. Yet this biological basis does not necessarily determine the form that territoriality takes in different cultures.
Homo Sapien, or human evolution began 300k years ago, however, our brains started developing long before then. Like everything else in nature, the human brain evolved as well (4 levels: reptillian, old mammalian, the neocortex, prefrontal cortex). In “Theory of Indivisibility: How Did We Get Here? (Part 2)”, I discuss the evolution of life on earth, including how mammals evolved from reptiles. I really want you to grasp the length of time that it took for these processes to evolve and for us to get to where we are today as human beings. It took millions of years of evolution…and we’re still evolving.
Humans, like many of our primate cousins, engage in group (as well as individual) territoriality. Tribal groups saw themselves connected to particular territories — a place that was “theirs.” Yet their attitude towards the land was very different from ours. They frequently spoke of the land as their parent, as a sacred being, upon whom they were dependent and to whom they owed loyalty and service.
For most of these tribal peoples, their sense of “land ownership” involved only the right to use and to exclude people of other tribes (usually not members of their own). If there were any private rights, these were usually subject to review by the group and would cease if the land was no longer being used. The sale of land was either not even a possibility or not permitted. As for inheritance, every person had use rights simply by membership in the group, so a growing child would not have to wait until some other individual died (or pay a special fee) to gain full access to the land.
In “Theory of Indivisibility: The Evolution of Power-Over Systems”, we looked at the fact that for the first 290,000 years of human evolution, we lived together in nomadic hunter-gatherer bands consisting of a few dozen people. The overall global population was very low, so prehistoric humans had plenty of space to roam. Territorial sentiments in human societies evolved within tribes that usually consisted of hundreds of people. Tribes began to form after populations boomed during and after the agricultural revolution.
In early agricultural societies, farming made the human relationship to the land more concentrated. Tilling the land and making permanent settlements meant a greater direct investment in a particular place. Yet this did not immediately lead to our current-day ideas of ownership. To the best of our knowledge, early farming communities continued to experience an intimate spiritual connection to the land, and they often held land in common under the control of a village council.
It was not so much farming directly, but the larger-than-tribal societies called chiefdoms that led to major changes in attitudes towards the land. Chiefdoms consisted of thousands of people. Many of the first civilizations were centered around a (supposedly) godlike king, and it was a natural extension to go from the tribal idea that “the land belongs to the gods” to the idea that all of the kingdom belongs to the god-king. Since the god-king was supposed to personify the whole community, this was still a form of community ownership, but now personalized. Privileges of use and control of various types were distributed to the ruling elite on the basis of custom and politics.
As time went on, land took on a new meaning for these ruling elites. It became an abstraction, a source of power and wealth, a tool for other purposes. The name of the game became conquer, hold, and extract the maximum tribute. Just as the article The Parable Of The Tribes (which I referenced in “Theory of Indivisibility: The Evolution of Power-Over Systems”) suggested, the human struggle for power gradually came to be the dominant factor shaping our relationship to the land. This shift from seeing the land as a sacred mother to merely a commodity required deep changes throughout these cultures, such as moving the gods and sacred beings from the earth into the sky where they could conveniently be as mobile as the ever-changing boundaries of their growing empires.
New social norms converged at the intersection of power-over, patriarchy, and religion, evolving during the era of pre-history over the course of about 5,000 years, between the onset of the agricultural revolution and the invention of written language. It took a long time for new beliefs and practices to take root.
During the era of recorded history, the idea of private land ownership developed as a second step — partly in reaction to the power of the sovereign and partly in response to the opportunities of a larger-than-village economy. In god-king societies, the privileges of the nobility were often easily withdrawn at the whim of the sovereign, and the importance of politics and raw power as the basis of ownership was rarely forgotten. To guard their power, the nobility frequently pushed for greater legal & customary recognition of their land rights. In the less centralized societies and in the democracies and republics of this period, private ownership developed in response to the breakdown of village cohesiveness. In either case, private property permitted the individual to be a “little king” of his own lands.
By the early days of Greece and Rome (1200–800 BCE), community common land, state or sovereign land, and private land all had strong traditions behind them. Plato and Aristotle both discussed various mixtures of private and state ownership in ideal societies, with Aristotle upholding the value of private ownership as a means of protecting diversity.
Concepts of private property ownership of land evolved in Europe prior to other places due to the emergence of commerce which led to the movement away from absolute monarchies of kings and queens. I researched how private ownership evolved in Africa as well and it began long after Europe.
For those of you who have been listening and reading along from the beginning, I’m sure that you are mentally connecting the dots between power-over, patriarchy, religion, and ownership. Over the course of thousands of years, due to the environmental and social demands created by agricultural ways of life, systems of power-over evolved and ushered in systems of patriarchy. Once patriarchy took root, it began to influence spiritual practices that previously honored the spiritual essence in all things in nature equally, to become religions where gods and moral authorities were men. Only men were able to own land or private property until fairly recently (in the 19th century), when married women began to gain rights like the ability to run their own business, make decisions without their husband’s consent, and the ability to own (but not control) their own land. Notice that I said married woman only. It would take even longer before all woman gained these same rights.
This is a great time to transition into a brief look at the evolution of the concept of owning humans.
According to the Wikipedia article titled, “The History of Slavery”, mass slavery requires economic surpluses and a high population density to be viable. Due to these factors, the practice of slavery only proliferated after the invention of agriculture.[18]
Slavery was known in civilizations as old as Sumer, as well as in almost every other ancient civilization, including Ancient Egypt, Ancient China, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Babylonia, Ancient Iran, Ancient Greece, Ancient India, the Roman Empire, the Arab Islamic Caliphate and Sultanate, Nubia and the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas.[19] Such institutions were a mixture of debt-slavery, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war, child abandonment, and the birth of slave children to slaves.
Varying degrees of possessing, controlling, and owning land, personal property, and humans have evolved in human societies for the past 10,000 years. Today we are grappling with the unintended consequences of those social norms set into motion so very long ago. Some would argue that these norms created wealth, abundance, and technological advancements that have benefited society greatly. While others will point to the deteriation of natural resources, climate change, and the massive amounts of human oppression endured over the years as evidence that a change of course is desperatly needed.
We will take a closer look at both perspectives during in my next transcript, which will be an exploration of the current complexities of ownership.
Thanks again for joining me!
I love y’all, peace!
Dr. Sundiata Soon-Jahta
2022. Podcast brought into written form by Ray Lightheart
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Articles:
The History of Private Property
Understanding the Structure Of The Brain
Websites:
