clans

70:4.1The first peace group was the fam­ily, then the clan, the tribe, and later on the na­tion, which even­tu­ally be­came the mod­ern ter­ri­to­rial state. The fact that the pres­ent-day peace groups have long since ex­panded be­yond blood ties to em­brace na­tions is most en­cour­ag­ing, de­spite the fact that Uran­tia na­tions are still spend­ing vast sums on war prepa­ra­tions.

70:4.2The clans were blood-tie groups within the tribe, and they owed their ex­is­tence to cer­tain com­mon in­ter­ests, such as:

70:4.31. Trac­ing ori­gin back to a com­mon an­ces­tor.

70:4.42. Al­le­giance to a com­mon re­li­gious totem.

70:4.53. Speak­ing the same di­alect.

70:4.64. Shar­ing a com­mon dwell­ing place.

70:4.75. Fear­ing the same en­e­mies.

70:4.86. Hav­ing had a com­mon mil­i­tary ex­pe­ri­ence.

70:4.9The clan head­men were al­ways sub­or­di­nate to the tribal chief, the early tribal gov­ern­ments be­ing a loose con­fed­er­a­tion of clans. The na­tive Aus­tralians never de­vel­oped a tribal form of gov­ern­ment.

70:4.10The clan peace chiefs usu­ally ruled through the mother line; the tribal war chiefs es­tab­lished the fa­ther line. The courts of the tribal chiefs and early kings con­sisted of the head­men of the clans, whom it was cus­tom­ary to in­vite into the king’s pres­ence sev­eral times a year. This en­abled him to watch them and the bet­ter se­cure their co-op­er­a­tion. The clans served a valu­able pur­pose in lo­cal self-gov­ern­ment, but they greatly de­layed the growth of large and strong na­tions.

63:4.3They were a won­der­ful tribe. The males would fight hero­ically for the safety of their mates and their off­spring; the fe­males were af­fec­tion­ately de­voted to their chil­dren. But their pa­tri­o­tism was wholly lim­ited to the im­me­di­ate clan. They were very loyal to their fam­i­lies; they would die with­out ques­tion in de­fense of their chil­dren, but they were not able to grasp the idea of try­ing to make the world a bet­ter place for their grand­chil­dren. Al­tru­ism was as yet un­born in the hu­man heart, not­with­stand­ing that all of the emo­tions es­sen­tial to the birth of re­li­gion were al­ready pres­ent in these Uran­tia abo­rig­ines.

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.

70:5.2With the grad­ual emer­gence of the fam­ily units the foun­da­tions of gov­ern­ment were es­tab­lished in the clan or­ga­ni­za­tion, the group­ing of con­san­guineous fam­i­lies. The first real gov­ern­men­tal body was the coun­cil of the el­ders. This reg­u­la­tive group was com­posed of old men who had dis­tin­guished them­selves in some ef­fi­cient man­ner. Wis­dom and ex­pe­ri­ence were early ap­pre­ci­ated even by bar­baric man, and there en­sued a long age of the dom­i­na­tion of the el­ders. This reign of the oli­garchy of age grad­u­ally grew into the pa­tri­ar­chal idea.

70:7.1Blood kin­ship de­ter­mined the first so­cial groups; as­so­ci­a­tion en­larged the kin­ship clan. In­ter­mar­riage was the next step in group en­large­ment, and the re­sul­tant com­plex tribe was the first true po­lit­i­cal body. The next ad­vance in so­cial de­vel­op­ment was the evo­lu­tion of re­li­gious cults and the po­lit­i­cal clubs. These first ap­peared as se­cret so­ci­eties and orig­i­nally were wholly re­li­gious; sub­se­quently they be­came reg­u­la­tive. At first they were men’s clubs; later women’s groups ap­peared. Pres­ently they be­came di­vided into two classes: so­ciopo­lit­i­cal and re­li­gio-mys­ti­cal.

71:1.23The em­bry­onic state was made pos­si­ble by the de­cline of the blood bond in fa­vor of the ter­ri­to­rial, and such tribal fed­er­a­tions were usu­ally firmly ce­mented by con­quest. While a sov­er­eignty that tran­scends all mi­nor strug­gles and group dif­fer­ences is the char­ac­ter­is­tic of the true state, still, many classes and castes per­sist in the later state or­ga­ni­za­tions as rem­nants of the clans and tribes of for­mer days. The later and larger ter­ri­to­rial states had a long and bit­ter strug­gle with these smaller con­san­guineous clan groups, the tribal gov­ern­ment prov­ing a valu­able tran­si­tion from fam­ily to state au­thor­ity. Dur­ing later times many clans grew out of trades and other in­dus­trial as­so­ci­a­tions.

68:6.9Many races learned the tech­nique of abor­tion, and this prac­tice be­came very com­mon af­ter the es­tab­lish­ment of the taboo on child­birth among the un­mar­ried. It was long the cus­tom for a maiden to kill her off­spring, but among more civ­i­lized groups these il­le­git­i­mate chil­dren be­came the wards of the girl’s mother. Many prim­i­tive clans were vir­tu­ally ex­ter­mi­nated by the prac­tice of both abor­tion and in­fan­ti­cide. But re­gard­less of the dic­tates of the mores, very few chil­dren were ever de­stroyed af­ter hav­ing once been suck­led—ma­ter­nal af­fec­tion is too strong.

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.

103:3.1While the be­lief in spir­its, dreams, and di­verse other su­per­sti­tions all played a part in the evo­lu­tion­ary ori­gin of prim­i­tive re­li­gions, you should not over­look the in­flu­ence of the clan or tribal spirit of sol­i­dar­ity. In the group re­la­tion­ship there was pre­sented the ex­act so­cial sit­u­a­tion which pro­vided the chal­lenge to the ego­is­tic-al­tru­is­tic con­flict in the moral na­ture of the early hu­man mind. In spite of their be­lief in spir­its, prim­i­tive Aus­tralians still fo­cus their re­li­gion upon the clan. In time, such re­li­gious con­cepts tend to per­son­al­ize, first, as an­i­mals, and later, as a super­man or as a God. Even such in­fe­rior races as the African Bush­men, who are not even totemic in their be­liefs, do have a rec­og­ni­tion of the dif­fer­ence be­tween the self-in­ter­est and the group-in­ter­est, a prim­i­tive dis­tinc­tion be­tween the val­ues of the sec­u­lar and the sa­cred. But the so­cial group is not the source of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Re­gard­less of the in­flu­ence of all these prim­i­tive con­tri­bu­tions to man’s early re­li­gion, the fact re­mains that the true re­li­gious im­pulse has its ori­gin in gen­uine spirit pres­ences ac­ti­vat­ing the will to be un­selfish.

71:1.24Fail­ure of state in­te­gra­tion re­sults in ret­ro­gres­sion to pre­state con­di­tions of gov­ern­men­tal tech­niques, such as the feu­dal­ism of the Eu­ro­pean Mid­dle Ages. Dur­ing these dark ages the ter­ri­to­rial state col­lapsed, and there was a re­ver­sion to the small cas­tle groups, the reap­pear­ance of the clan and tribal stages of de­vel­op­ment. Sim­i­lar semi­states even now ex­ist in Asia and Africa, but not all of them are evo­lu­tion­ary re­ver­sions; many are the em­bry­onic nu­cle­uses of states of the fu­ture.

50:5.52. The se­cu­rity age. Just as soon as the prim­i­tive hunter can spare any time from the search for food, he turns this leisure to aug­ment­ing his se­cu­rity. More and more at­ten­tion is de­voted to the tech­nique of war. Homes are for­ti­fied, and the clans are so­lid­i­fied by mu­tual fear and by the in­cul­ca­tion of hate for for­eign groups. Self-preser­va­tion is a pur­suit which al­ways fol­lows self-main­te­nance.

134:5.8The dif­fi­culty in the evo­lu­tion of po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty from the fam­ily to all man­kind, lies in the in­er­tia-re­sis­tance ex­hib­ited on all in­ter­ven­ing lev­els. Fam­i­lies have, on oc­ca­sion, de­fied their clan, while clans and tribes have of­ten been sub­ver­sive of the sov­er­eignty of the ter­ri­to­rial state. Each new and for­ward evo­lu­tion of po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty is (and has al­ways been) em­bar­rassed and ham­pered by the “scaf­fold­ing stages” of the pre­vi­ous de­vel­op­ments in po­lit­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tion. And this is true be­cause hu­man loy­al­ties, once mo­bi­lized, are hard to change. The same loy­alty which makes pos­si­ble the evo­lu­tion of the tribe, makes dif­fi­cult the evo­lu­tion of the super­tribe—the ter­ri­to­rial state. And the same loy­alty (pa­tri­o­tism) which makes pos­si­ble the evo­lu­tion of the ter­ri­to­rial state, vastly com­pli­cates the evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment of the gov­ern­ment of all man­kind.