The Evolution of Human Government

70:3.1In the most prim­i­tive so­ci­ety the horde is ev­ery­thing; even chil­dren are its com­mon prop­erty. The evolv­ing fam­ily dis­placed the horde in child rear­ing, while the emerg­ing clans and tribes took its place as the so­cial unit.

70:3.2Sex hunger and mother love es­tab­lish the fam­ily. But real gov­ern­ment does not ap­pear un­til super­fam­ily groups have be­gun to form. In the pre­fam­ily days of the horde, lead­er­ship was pro­vided by in­for­mally cho­sen in­di­vid­u­als. The African Bush­men have never pro­gressed be­yond this prim­i­tive stage; they do not have chiefs in the horde.

70:3.3Fam­i­lies be­came united by blood ties in clans, ag­gre­ga­tions of kins­men; and these sub­se­quently evolved into tribes, ter­ri­to­rial com­mu­ni­ties. War­fare and ex­ter­nal pres­sure forced the tribal or­ga­ni­za­tion upon the kin­ship clans, but it was com­merce and trade that held these early and prim­i­tive groups to­gether with some de­gree of in­ter­nal peace.

70:3.4The peace of Uran­tia will be pro­moted far more by in­ter­na­tional trade or­ga­ni­za­tions than by all the sen­ti­men­tal soph­istry of vi­sion­ary peace plan­ning. Trade re­la­tions have been fa­cil­i­tated by de­vel­op­ment of lan­guage and by im­proved meth­ods of com­mu­ni­ca­tion as well as by bet­ter trans­porta­tion.

70:3.5The ab­sence of a com­mon lan­guage has al­ways im­peded the growth of peace groups, but money has be­come the uni­ver­sal lan­guage of mod­ern trade. Mod­ern so­ci­ety is largely held to­gether by the in­dus­trial mar­ket. The gain mo­tive is a mighty civ­i­lizer when aug­mented by the de­sire to serve.

70:3.6In the early ages each tribe was sur­rounded by con­cen­tric cir­cles of in­creas­ing fear and sus­pi­cion; hence it was once the cus­tom to kill all strangers, later on, to en­slave them. The old idea of friend­ship meant adop­tion into the clan; and clan mem­ber­ship was be­lieved to sur­vive death—one of the ear­li­est con­cepts of eter­nal life.

70:3.7The cer­e­mony of adop­tion con­sisted in drink­ing each other’s blood. In some groups saliva was ex­changed in the place of blood drink­ing, this be­ing the an­cient ori­gin of the prac­tice of so­cial kiss­ing. And all cer­e­monies of as­so­ci­a­tion, whether mar­riage or adop­tion, were al­ways ter­mi­nated by feast­ing.

70:3.8In later times, blood di­luted with red wine was used, and even­tu­ally wine alone was drunk to seal the adop­tion cer­e­mony, which was sig­ni­fied in the touch­ing of the wine cups and con­sum­mated by the swal­low­ing of the bev­er­age. The He­brews em­ployed a mod­i­fied form of this adop­tion cer­e­mony. Their Arab an­ces­tors made use of the oath taken while the hand of the can­di­date rested upon the gen­er­a­tive or­gan of the tribal na­tive. The He­brews treated adopted aliens kindly and fra­ter­nally. “The stranger that dwells with you shall be as one born among you, and you shall love him as your­self.”

70:3.9“Guest friend­ship” was a re­la­tion of tem­po­rary hos­pi­tal­ity. When vis­it­ing guests de­parted, a dish would be bro­ken in half, one piece be­ing given the de­part­ing friend so that it would serve as a suit­able in­tro­duc­tion for a third party who might ar­rive on a later visit. It was cus­tom­ary for guests to pay their way by telling tales of their trav­els and ad­ven­tures. The sto­ry­tellers of olden times be­came so pop­u­lar that the mores even­tu­ally for­bade their func­tion­ing dur­ing ei­ther the hunt­ing or har­vest sea­sons.

70:3.10The first treaties of peace were the “blood bonds.” The peace am­bas­sadors of two war­ring tribes would meet, pay their re­spects, and then pro­ceed to prick the skin un­til it bled; where­upon they would suck each other’s blood and de­clare peace.

70:3.11The ear­li­est peace mis­sions con­sisted of del­e­ga­tions of men bring­ing their choice maid­ens for the sex grat­i­fi­ca­tion of their one­time en­e­mies, the sex ap­petite be­ing uti­lized in com­bat­ing the war urge. The tribe so hon­ored would pay a re­turn visit, with its of­fer­ing of maid­ens; where­upon peace would be firmly es­tab­lished. And soon in­ter­mar­riages be­tween the fam­i­lies of the chiefs were sanc­tioned.