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It is a common belief that democratic forms of government began in Greece and Rome. However, a newly published global study on ancient societies upends this perception, rewriting our understanding of democracy's origins.
An international team of researchers analyzed archaeological and historical evidence from 31 ancient societies across Europe, Asia, and the Americas and found that shared, inclusive governance was far more common than was once believed.
The study, which appears in the journal Science Advances, is the first comprehensive effort to use archaeological evidence to assess the types of government that existed in early societies.
"People often assume that democratic practices started in Greece and Rome," says Gary Feinman, the study's lead author and the MacArthur Curator of Mesoamerican and Central American Anthropology at the Field Museum's Negaunee Integrative Research Center. "But our research shows that many societies around the world developed ways to limit the power of rulers and give ordinary people a voice."
The researchers, drawing upon art, architecture, and other artifacts, also found evidence of autocratic governments.
"These findings show that both democracy and autocracy were widespread in the ancient world," observes New York University Professor David Stasavage, author of The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today and a co-author of the paper. "Significantly, we now have a deeper appreciation of the many factors that affect how governments form and change over time—knowledge that can guide understanding of present-day geopolitical developments."
The study's authors note that both types of governments come in different forms. In an autocracy, one person or a small group holds all the power; examples of autocracy can include absolute monarchies and dictatorships. In a democracy, decision-making power is shared among the people. Elections often go hand-in-hand with democracy, but not always.
"Elections aren't exactly the greatest metric for what counts as a democracy, so with this study, we tried to draw on historical examples of human political organization," says Feinman. "We defined two key dimensions of governance. One of them is the degree to which power is concentrated in just one individual or just one institution. The other is the degree of inclusiveness—how much the bulk of the citizens have access to power and can participate in some aspects of governance."
[...] The researchers found that population size and the number of political levels did not account for whether a society would be autocratic—contrary to conventional wisdom, populous or geographically expansive societies were not always autocratic. Instead, says Feinman, "the strongest factor shaping how much power rulers held was how they financed their authority."
Societies that depended heavily on revenue that was controlled or monopolized by leaders—such as mines, long-distance trade routes, slave labor, or war plunder—tended to become more autocratic. In contrast, societies funded mainly through broad internal taxes or community labor were more likely to distribute power and maintain systems of shared governance.
The study also shows that societies with more inclusive political systems generally had lower levels of economic inequality.
Journal Reference: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aec1426
(Score: 2) by jb on Wednesday April 08, @07:59AM (6 children)
"demos" meant a defined area of land where people lived in ancient Athens: somewhat like a suburb, but more like an electorate since each demos had its own electoral roll.
That's quite literally where the word "democracy" comes from. Yes sure, other types of "power not exclusively held by one big bully" probably existed before then, but to call them "democracy" would be misleading.
(Score: 5, Touché) by pe1rxq on Wednesday April 08, @08:07AM (2 children)
So according to you 'humans' did not exist before the romans? (Humanus is Latin)
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday April 08, @05:20PM (1 child)
I'd agree with OP in that I spent 5 minutes trying to find hard archeological evidence or even mere mythology about pre-Greek electoral rolls, and it seems nobody before the Greeks tried "lists of voters" to run a government.
Apparently, the pre-Assyrian Empire folks around 1200 BC didn't use a registered voter list for "important" stuff but they did use it for ceremonial/religious stuff and likely the Greeks stole the idea and upgraded it and applied it to outright running a government, which is pretty creative of them.
I read something about literacy rates being estimated as at least 30% in Ancient Athens based on material use and supplies, and theoretically approached 100% in Sparta, that was probably the key. It seems the Mycenaean's never had a very high literacy rate based on the stuff they left behind (including analysis of garbage pile contents)
I would not be surprised at all if they stole the idea from the Assyrians and "hey almost all of us can read so this could work as an interesting tool to run a government".
(Score: 2) by pdfernhout on Thursday April 09, @05:39PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything [wikipedia.org]
"Describing the diversity of early human societies, the book critiques traditional narratives of history's linear development from primitivism to civilization. Instead, The Dawn of Everything posits that humans lived in large, complex, but decentralized polities for millennia. The book suggests that social emancipation can be found in a more accurate understanding of human history, based on recent scientific evidence with the assistance of the fields of anthropology and archaeology."
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday April 08, @05:51PM
Part of the problem with definitions here is that the adjective democratic is broader than the noun democracy. Democratic refers to requiring majority acceptance for policy, action, or the holding of certain offices. Democracy refers to a specific form of government where all important decisions require majority vote and that vote overrides everything else including laws and justice. Many governments are democratic in varying degrees; no current government is a democracy.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Wednesday April 08, @06:07PM (1 child)
When they say things like that they tend to forget that their "democracy" wasn't actually all the people. It was some people. Slaves and women do not vote. Not even all men. So perhaps classical democracy isn't all that it was cracked up to be in that regard. We have in large gotten rid of the slavery issue and women can now vote. I'm sure some blame both these things for all our woes.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 08, @11:30PM
I'd propose a workable definition is a democracy is having a "larger than Dunbar Number of participants in policy making" and the membership list is mostly egalitarian-ish for the era, and exclusive rather than inclusive.
Smaller than Dunbar Number groups just run like a mafia family or oligarchy or family monarchy. Once the group of policy makers gets too large they either have to go open-ish like democracy or closed-ish like soviet era russia.
By inclusive vs exclusive I mean usually democracies list groups that can't participate and everyone else is assumed permitted. So no prisoners, no foreigners, etc. Inclusive is more like the soviet system where you have to be an elite tier party member to make policy and its assumed that 99.999% of the population will be ruled over.
"All the people" would always be a bad idea. Never want convicted prisoners, foreigners, young people (like 7 years old), or crazy people (wards of the state) to gain access.