CHAPTER 14

第十四章

FROM EGALITARIANISM TO KLEPTOCRACY

从平等主义到盗贼统治

IN 1979, WHILE I WAS FLYING WITH MISSIONARY FRIENDS over a remote swamp-filled basin of New Guinea, I noticed a few huts many miles apart. The pilot explained to me that, somewhere in that muddy expanse below us, a group of Indonesian crocodile hunters had recently come across a group of New Guinea nomads. Both groups had panicked, and the encounter had ended with the Indonesians shooting several of the nomads.

1979年，我和几个传教士朋友坐飞机飞越新几内亚的一个到处是沼泽的偏远盆地时，我注意到一些相隔好多英里的简陋小屋。驾驶员向我解释说，在我们下面那一大片泥淖中的某个地方，有一群猎捕鳄鱼的印度尼西亚人不久前碰上了一群新几内亚的游牧民。这两群人都惊慌失措，这次意外的相遇最后以印度尼西亚人开枪打死几个游牧民而告终。

My missionary friends guessed that the nomads belonged to an uncontacted group called the Fayu, known to the outside world only through accounts by their terrified neighbors, a missionized group of erstwhile nomads called the Kirikiri. First contacts between outsiders and New Guinea groups are always potentially dangerous, but this beginning was especially inauspicious. Nevertheless, my friend Doug flew in by helicopter to try to establish friendly relations with the Fayu. He returned, alive but shaken, to tell a remarkable story.

我的传教士朋友们猜想，这些游牧民属于一个从未和外界接触过的叫做法尤族的群体，外界只是通过他们的被吓坏了的叫做基里基里族的邻居的描述才知道他们的。基里基里族从前也是游牧民族，后来因接受福音而改变了信仰。外人和新几内亚的一些群体的初次接触，始终存在着潜在的危险，但像这样的开端就尤其不吉利。尽管如此，我的朋友道格还是坐直升机飞了进来，他想要和法尤人建立友好关系。他倒是活着回来了，但却显得心有余悸，他讲了一个非同一般的故事。

It turned out that the Fayu normally lived as single families, scattered through the swamp and coming together once or twice each year to negotiate exchanges of brides. Doug's visit coincided with such a gathering, of a few dozen Fayu. To us, a few dozen people constitute a small, ordinary gathering, but to the Fayu it was a rare, frightening event. Murderers suddenly found themselves face-to-face with their victim's relatives. For example, one Fayu man spotted the man who had killed his father. The son raised his ax and rushed at the murderer but was wrestled to the ground by friends; then the murderer came at the prostrate son with an ax and was also wrestled down. Both men were held, screaming in rage, until they seemed sufficiently exhausted to be released. Other men periodically shouted insults at each other, shook with anger and frustration, and pounded the ground with their axes. That tension continued for the several days of the gathering, while Doug prayed that the visit would not end in violence.

原来法尤族人通常都是独家居住，他们散布在整个沼泽地带，每年聚会一两次，谈判交换新娘的事。道格的访问碰巧赶上了有几十个法尤族人参加的一次这样的聚会。对我们来说，几十个人只是一个小小的普通聚会，但对法尤族人来说，这却是一个少有的令人心惊肉跳的事件。杀人凶手突然间同死者的亲属狭路相逢。例如，一个法尤族男子认出了杀死他父亲的人。这个做儿子的举起斧头向杀人凶手冲去，但被朋友们摔倒在地上；于是，那个杀人凶手也拿起斧头向倒在地上的那个做儿子的人走过来，但也给人摔倒在地上。这两个人都给紧紧地按住，他们大声怒喊，直到好像差不多筋疲力尽了才被放开。其他的人则不时地对骂，愤怒和失望使他们浑身发抖，他们用斧头不住狠狠地敲击地面。在聚会的几天中一直就是这样紧张，使道格不停地祷告这次访问不要以暴力收场。

The Fayu consist of about 400 hunter-gatherers, divided into four clans and wandering over a few hundred square miles. According to their own account, they had formerly numbered about 2,000, but their population had been greatly reduced as a result of Fayu killing Fayu. They lacked political and social mechanisms, which we take for granted, to achieve peaceful resolution of serious disputes. Eventually, as a result of Doug's visit, one group of Fayu invited a courageous husband-and-wife missionary couple to live with them. The couple has now resided there for a dozen years and gradually persuaded the Fayu to renounce violence. The Fayu are thereby being brought into the modern world, where they face an uncertain future.

法尤族人过着狩猎采集生活，他们大约有400人，分为4个族群，在几百平方英里的范围内游荡。根据他们自己的描述，他们原来有2000人左右，但由于自相残杀，他们的人口大大减少了。他们没有我们认为理所当然的政治和社会机构来和平解决严重的争端。最后，由于道格的这次访问，法尤族人的一个群体邀请了一对勇敢的传教士夫妇和他们一起生活。这对夫妇如今已在那里住了十几年，并逐步说服法尤族人放弃暴力。这些法尤族人由此被带入了现代世界，在他们的前面是一个难以预料的未来。

Many other previously uncontacted groups of New Guineans and Amazonian Indians have similarly owed to missionaries their incorporation into modern society. After the missionaries come teachers and doctors, bureaucrats and soldiers. The spreads of government and of religion have thus been linked to each other throughout recorded history, whether the spread has been peaceful ^{(as eventually with the Fayu)} or by force. In the latter case it is often government that organizes the conquest, and religion that justifies it. While nomads and tribespeople occasionally defeat organized governments and religions, the trend over the past 13,000 years has been for the nomads and tribespeople to lose.

其他许多以前从未与外界接触过的新几内亚人和亚马孙河地区印第安人的群体，同样由于传教士的作用而被吸收进现代社会。跟在传教士后面到来的是教师和医生、政府官员和士兵。政府和宗教的扩张在整个有文字记载的历史上一直就是这样相互联系在一起的，不管这种扩张是以和平手段实现的^{(如最后对法尤族人)}，还是以暴力手段实现的。就后一种情况来说，通常都是由政府来组织征服，然后再由宗教来为这种征服辩护。虽然游牧民族和部落民族偶尔也打败过有组织的政府和宗教，但在过去的13000年中，总的趋势是：失败的还是游牧民族和部落民族。

At the end of the last Ice Age, much of the world's population lived in societies similar to that of the Fayu today, and no people then lived in a much more complex society. As recently as A.D. 1500, less than 20 percent of the world's land area was marked off by boundaries into states run by bureaucrats and governed by laws. Today, all land except Antarctica's is so divided. Descendants of those societies that achieved centralized government and organized religion earliest ended up dominating the modern world. The combination of government and religion has thus functioned, together with germs, writing, and technology, as one of the four main sets of proximate agents leading to history's broadest pattern. How did government and religion arise?

在上一次冰期结束时，世界上很大一部分人口生活在类似今天法尤族的社会中，没有人是在一种复杂得多的社会中生活的。晚至公元1500年，全世界的土地被用边界线划分成由官员管理和法律统治的国家的还不到20%。今天，除南极大陆外，所有的土地都被划分成国家了。有些社会最早实现了集中统一的政府和有组织的宗教，而这些社会的子孙后代最后主宰了现代世界。政府和宗教就是这样结合起来发挥了作用，它们是产生历史最广泛模式的4组主要的直接动力之一，另外3组动力是病菌、文字和技术。那么，政府和宗教又是怎样产生的呢？

FAYU BANDS AND modern states represent opposite extremes along the spectrum of human societies. Modern American society and the Fayu differ in the presence or absence of a professional police force, cities, money, distinctions between rich and poor, and many other political, economic, and social institutions. Did all of those institutions arise together, or did some arise before others? We can infer the answer to this question by comparing modern societies at different levels of organization, by examining written accounts or archaeological evidence about past societies, and by observing how a society's institutions change over time.

法尤族群和现代国家代表整个人类社会的两个极端。现代美国社会和法尤族人社会的差异，在于有或没有专门的警察、机关、城市、金钱、贫富悬殊和其他许多政治、经济和社会制度。所有这些制度是一起产生的，还是有先有后？我们可以推断出对这个问题的答案，办法是研究关于过去社会的文字记录或考古证据和观察某个社会的制度在历史上的变迁情况。

Cultural anthropologists attempting to describe the diversity of human societies often divide them into as many as half a dozen categories. Any such attempt to define stages of any evolutionary or developmental continuum—whether of musical styles, human life stages, or human societies—is doubly doomed to imperfection. First, because each stage grows out of some previous stage, the lines of demarcation are inevitably arbitrary. ^{(For example, is a 19-year-old person an adolescent or a young adult?)} Second, developmental sequences are not invariant, so examples pigeonholed under the same stage are inevitably heterogeneous. ^{(Brahms and Liszt would turn in their graves to know that they are now grouped together as composers of the romantic period.)} Nevertheless, arbitrarily delineated stages provide a useful shorthand for discussing the diversity of music and of human societies, provided one bears in mind the above caveats. In that spirit, we shall use a simple classification based on just four categories—band, tribe, chiefdom, and state ^{(see Table 14.1)}—to understand societies.

试图描绘人类社会多样性的文化人类学家，常常把人类社会分为6、7种类型之多。有人试图为任何进化的或发展的统一体确定几个阶段——无论是关于音乐风格的、人类生活阶段的或是人类社会的，但任何此类做法都加倍注定是有缺陷的。首先，由于每一个阶段都是从前面的某个阶段发展来的，阶段与阶段之间的分界线不可避免地带有任意的性质。^{(例如，一个19岁的人是青少年还是年轻的成人？)}其次，发展的顺序也不是一成不变的，因此被分在同一阶段的例子必然是五花八门的。^{(勃拉姆斯和李斯特如果知道他们现在一起被归入浪漫主义时期作曲家一类，他们在坟墓里也会感到不安的。)}不过，如果人们牢记上面提出的告诫，任意划分的阶段却为讨论音乐和人类社会的多样性提供了一种有用的简便方法。本着这一精神，我们将要使用一种以族群、部落、酋长管辖地和国家这4种分类^(见表14.1)为基础的简单分类法来了解人类社会。

TABLE 14.1 Types of Societies

表14.1社会的类型

A horizontal arrow indicates that the attribute varies between less and more complex societies of that type.

水平方向的箭头表示该类型的较不复杂和较复杂的社会之间属性的差异。

Bands are the tiniest societies, consisting typically of 5 to 80 people, most or all of them close relatives by birth or by marriage. In effect, a band is an extended family or several related extended families. Today, bands still living autonomously are almost confined to the most remote parts of New Guinea and Amazonia, but within modern times there were many others that have only recently fallen under state control or been assimilated or exterminated. They include many or most African Pygmies, southern African San hunter-gatherers ^{(so-called Bushmen)}, Aboriginal Australians, Eskimos ^(Inuit), and Indians of some resource-poor areas of the Americas such as Tierra del Fuego and the northern boreal forests. All those modern bands are or were nomadic hunter-gatherers rather than settled food producers. Probably all humans lived in bands until at least 40,000 years ago, and most still did as recently as 11,000 years ago.

族群是最小的社会，一般由5到80人组成，其中大多数或全部是有血缘关系或婚姻关系的近亲。事实上，一个族群就是一个大家庭或几个有亲缘关系的大家庭。今天，仍然过着独立自主生活的族群，几乎只能在新几内亚和亚马孙河流域最偏远的地区找到，但在现代有许多别的族群受到了国家的控制，或者被同化，或者被消灭。他们包括许多或大多数的非洲俾格米人、非洲南部以狩猎采集为生的桑人^{(所谓布须曼人)}、澳大利亚土著人、爱斯基摩人^{(伊努特人)}以及美洲的某些资源贫乏地区如火地岛和北部山区森林中的印第安人。所有这些现代的族群无论现在或过去都是四处流浪以狩猎和采集为生的人，而不是定居的粮食生产者。直到至少4万年前，大概所有的人都生活在族群中，而大多数人晚至11000年前还仍然如此。

Bands lack many institutions that we take for granted in our own society. They have no permanent single base of residence. The band's land is used jointly by the whole group, instead of being partitioned among subgroups or individuals. There is no regular economic specialization, except by age and sex: all able-bodied individuals forage for food. There are no formal institutions, such as laws, police, and treaties, to resolve conflicts within and between bands. Band organization is often described as “egalitarian”: there is no formalized social stratification into upper and lower classes, no formalized or hereditary leadership, and no formalized monopolies of information and decision making. However, the term “egalitarian” should not be taken to mean that all band members are equal in prestige and contribute equally to decisions. Rather, the term merely means that any band “leadership” is informal and acquired through qualities such as personality, strength, intelligence, and fighting skills.

族群没有我们在自己的社会中认为理所当然的那许多制度。他们居无定所。族群的地盘为整个集体共同使用，而不是划分给小集团或个人。除了年龄和性别之分，族群中没有任何固定的经济专门化：体格健全的人一律自己去觅食。没有诸如法律、警察和条约之类的正式制度来解决族群内部和族群之间的冲突。族群组织常常被人说成是“平等主义的”：没有上层阶级和下层阶级之分的正式化了的社会阶层，没有正式化了的或世袭的领导地位，也没有正式化了的对信息和决策的垄断。然而，不应把“平等主义的”这个词拿来表示所有族群都有同等的威望，对决策都有同等的权力。这个词只是表示族群中的任何“领导地位”都是非正式的，它是通过诸如个性、力量、智慧和战斗技巧之类的品质而获得的。

My own experience with bands comes from the swampy lowland area of New Guinea where the Fayu live, a region known as the Lakes Plains. There, I still encounter extended families of a few adults with their dependent children and elderly, living in crude temporary shelters along streams and traveling by canoe and on foot. Why do peoples of the Lakes Plains continue to live as nomadic bands, when most other New Guinea peoples, and almost all other peoples elsewhere in the world, now live in settled larger groups? The explanation is that the region lacks dense local concentrations of resources that would permit many people to live together, and that ^{(until the arrival of missionaries bringing crop plants)} it also lacked native plants that could have permitted productive farming. The bands' food staple is the sago palm tree, whose core yields a starchy pith when the palm reaches maturity. The bands are nomadic, because they must move when they have cut the mature sago trees in an area. Band numbers are kept low by diseases ^{(especially malaria)}, by the lack of raw materials in the swamp ^{(even stone for tools must be obtained by trade)}, and by the limited amount of food that the swamp yields for humans. Similar limitations on the resources accessible to existing human technology prevail in the regions of the world recently occupied by other bands.

我自己对族群的经验来自新几内亚法尤族人居住的一个叫做湖泊平原的多沼泽的低地地区。在那里，我仍能碰到一些由几个成年人带着他们扶养的儿童和老人组成的大家庭，这些人住在溪流旁临时搭起来的简陋小屋里，他们出行靠独木舟和步行。在大多数其他新几内亚民族和世界上其他地方几乎所有其他民族今天在过着大群的定居生活时，为什么湖泊平原上的民族仍然在过着游牧的族群生活？对这个问题的解释是：这个地区没有可以使许多人生活在一起的本地大量集中的资源，而且^{(在传教士带来农作物之前)}它也没有使多产农业成为可能的本地植物。族群食物的主要来源是西谷椰子树，这种树在成熟时，它的果心就产生了一种含淀粉的木髓。这些族群之所以过着流浪生活，是因为他们在把一个地区成熟的西谷椰子树砍光后，他们必须迁往别的地方。由于疾病^{(尤其是疟疾)}，由于沼泽地带缺少原料^{(甚至连做工具用的石头都必须靠交换得来)}，以及由于沼泽地带为人类提供的食物数量有限，族群的数目一直很少。对人类现有技术能够利用的资源的类似限制，在世界上不久前为其他族群所占有的地区仍很普遍。

Our closest animal relatives, the gorillas and chimpanzees and bonobos of Africa, also live in bands. All humans presumably did so too, until improved technology for extracting food allowed some hunter-gatherers to settle in permanent dwellings in some resource-rich areas. The band is the political, economic, and social organization that we inherited from our millions of years of evolutionary history. Our developments beyond it all took place within the last few tens of thousands of years.

与人类亲缘关系最为接近的动物——非洲的大猩猩、黑猩猩和产于刚果河以南的倭黑猩猩——也是生活在族群中的。所有人类大概也都是如此，直到经过改进的觅食技术使得某些狩猎采集族群在某些资源丰富的地区的永久性住所定居下来。这种族群就是我们从几百万年的演化史继承下来的政治、经济和社会组织。超越这个阶段的发展则是近几万年中发生的事。

THE FIRST OF those stages beyond the band is termed the tribe, which differs in being larger ^{(typically comprising hundreds rather than dozens of people)} and usually having fixed settlements. However, some tribes and even chiefdoms consist of herders who move seasonally.

超越族群的那些阶段中的第一个阶段是部落。部落与族群的区别是它比较大^{(一般有几百人，而不是几十人)}，而且通常有固定的住所。然而，有些部落，甚至有些由酋长管辖的部落，却是由随季节而迁移的牧人组成的。

Tribal organization is exemplified by New Guinea highlanders, whose political unit before the arrival of colonial government was a village or else a close-knit cluster of villages. This political definition of “tribe” is thus often much smaller than what linguists and cultural anthropologists would define as a tribe—namely, a group that shares language and culture. For example, in 1964 I began to work among a group of highlanders known as the Foré. By linguistic and cultural standards, there were then 12,000 Foré, speaking two mutually intelligible dialects and living in 65 villages of several hundred people each. But there was no political unity whatsoever among villages of the Foré language group. Each hamlet was involved in a kaleidoscopically changing pattern of war and shifting alliances with all neighboring hamlets, regardless of whether the neighbors were Foré or speakers of a different language.

新几内亚的高原居民就属于典型的部落组织。在殖民政府来到前，他们的政治单位是一个村落或紧密结合在一起的一批村落。因此，这种从政治上界定的“部落”，通常要比语言学家和文化人类学家所界定的部落小得多——即部落是一个具有共同的语言和文化的群体。例如，1964年，我开始在一群叫做福雷族的高原居民中工作。按照语言学和文化的标准，当时的福雷族有12000人，操两种互相听得懂的方言，生活在65个村落里，每个村落有几百人。但在属于福雷语族的一些村落中并没有任何政治上的统一。每一个小村庄都卷入了同所有邻近小村庄一会儿战争一会儿改变结盟的令人眼花缭乱的老一套纷扰之中，而不管这些邻居是福雷人还是操某种不同语言的人。

Tribes, recently independent and now variously subordinated to national states, still occupy much of New Guinea, Melanesia, and Amazonia. Similar tribal organization in the past is inferred from archaeological evidence of settlements that were substantial but lacked the archaeological hallmarks of chiefdoms that I shall explain below. That evidence suggests that tribal organization began to emerge around 13,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent and later in some other areas. A prerequisite for living in settlements is either food production or else a productive environment with especially concentrated resources that can be hunted and gathered within a small area. That's why settlements, and by inference tribes, began to proliferate in the Fertile Crescent at that time, when climate changes and improved technology combined to permit abundant harvests of wild cereals.

不久前独立的并且现在纷纷隶属民族国家的一些部落，仍然占据着新几内亚、美拉尼西亚和亚马孙河流域的很大一部分地区。我们从一些定居点的考古证据推知，在过去也存在过类似的部落组织，这类定居点虽然数量不少，但都缺乏关于酋长管辖地的考古特征，这一点我将在下面予以说明。关于定居点的考古证据表明，部落组织于大约13000年前开始在新月沃地出现，后来又在其他一些地区出现。在定居点里生活的一个先决条件或是粮食生产，或是物产丰富的环境，具有可以在很小地区内进行狩猎和采集的特别集中的资源。这就是在气候变化加上技术改进使人们能够收获大量的野生谷物的时候，定居点和由此推知的部落开始在新月沃地数量激增的原因。

Besides differing from a band by virtue of its settled residence and its larger numbers, a tribe also differs in that it consists of more than one formally recognized kinship group, termed clans, which exchange marriage partners. Land belongs to a particular clan, not to the whole tribe. However, the number of people in a tribe is still low enough that everyone knows everyone else by name and relationships.

部落和族群的不同点是部落有固定的住所和人数更多，除此以外，还有一点也是不同的，那就是：部落是由不止一个的得到正式承认的亲属群体所组成，这些群体称为氏族，氏族之间互相通婚。土地属于某个氏族，不属于整个部落。然而，部落的人数仍然很少，每一个人都知道另外每一个人的名字和他的各种亲属关系。

For other types of human groups as well, “a few hundred” seems to be an upper limit for group size compatible with everyone's knowing everybody. In our state society, for instance, school principals are likely to know all their students by name if the school contains a few hundred children, but not if it contains a few thousand children. One reason why the organization of human government tends to change from that of a tribe to that of a chiefdom in societies with more than a few hundred members is that the difficult issue of conflict resolution between strangers becomes increasingly acute in larger groups. A fact further diffusing potential problems of conflict resolution in tribes is that almost everyone is related to everyone else, by blood or marriage or both. Those ties of relationships binding all tribal members make police, laws, and other conflict-resolving institutions of larger societies unnecessary, since any two villagers getting into an argument will share many kin, who apply pressure on them to keep it from becoming violent. In traditional New Guinea society, if a New Guinean happened to encounter an unfamiliar New Guinean while both were away from their respective villages, the two engaged in a long discussion of their relatives, in an attempt to establish some relationship and hence some reason why the two should not attempt to kill each other.

对人类其他类型的群体来说也是一样，在一个群体里如要做到彼此了解，这个群体的人数最多似乎以“几百人”为宜。例如，在我们的国家社会中，如果一所学校只有几百个小学生，校长可能叫得出他所有学生的名字，而如果这所学校里有几千个小学生，他就做不到了。在超过几百人的社会中，人类的政府组织往往都是由部落组织转换为酋长管辖地组织，这种情况的一个原因是：在不认识的人们之间解决冲突本来就是一个难题，而随着群体的扩大，这个难题也变得日益尖锐起来。有一个事实在解决部落成员之间的冲突时有助于化解可能出现的问题，这个事实就是部落中的每一个人和其他每一个人或是有血缘关系，或是有姻亲关系，或是两种关系都有。把所有部落成员维系在一起的这种亲属关系纽带，使得人数较多的社会才有的警察、法律和其他解决冲突的制度变得不必要了，因为任何两个发生争执的村庄都有许多共同的亲属，他们对双方施加压力，使争执不致演变成激烈的冲突。在新几内亚的传统社会里，如果一个新几内亚人碰巧和另一个陌生的新几内亚人发生冲突，而两人离开各自的村庄又都很远，于是两人就长时间地谈论他们的亲属，试图建立某种关系，从而找到某种理由使两人不会产生要杀死对方的念头。

Despite all of these differences between bands and tribes, many similarities remain. Tribes still have an informal, “egalitarian” system of government. Information and decision making are both communal. In the New Guinea highlands, I have watched village meetings where all adults in the village were present, sitting on the ground, and individuals made speeches, without any appearance of one person's “chairing” the discussion. Many highland villages do have someone known as the “big-man,” the most influential man of the village. But that position is not a formal office to be filled and carries only limited power. The big-man has no independent decision-making authority, knows no diplomatic secrets, and can do no more than attempt to sway communal decisions. Big-men achieve that status by their own attributes; the position is not inherited.

尽管族群和部落之间存在着这种种差异，但它们仍然有许多类似之处。部落仍然具有一种非正式的、“平等主义的”政府制度。信息和决策都是公共的。在新几内亚高原地区，我观看过一些村庄会议，村子里的成年人全都到会，他们坐在地上，大家轮流发言，看不出有什么人在“主持”讨论。高原地区的许多村庄的确都有一个叫做“大人物”的人，也就是村子里最有影响的人。但这种地位不是一个由人来担任的正式职务，而且也只有有限的权力。这个大人物没有独立的决策权，对外交秘密一无所知，除了试图影响公共决定外，他什么也做不了。大人物靠他们自己的德性获得了这种身份；他们的地位是不能世袭的。

Tribes also share with bands an “egalitarian” social system, without ranked lineages or classes. Not only is status not inherited; no member of a traditional tribe or band can become disproportionately wealthy by his or her own efforts, because each individual has debts and obligations to many others. It is therefore impossible for an outsider to guess, from appearances, which of all the adult men in a village is the big-man: he lives in the same type of hut, wears the same clothes or ornaments, or is as naked, as everyone else.

部落和族群一样，也有一种“平等主义的”社会制度，而没有分成等级的家族或阶级。不但身份地位是不能世袭的，而且在传统的部落或族群成员中，任何人都不能靠自己的努力而过于富有，因为每个人对其他许多人都负有义务和责任。因此，外来人很难从外表上猜出在村子里的所有成年人中谁是大人物，因为他和其他每一个人一样，住的是同样的简陋小屋，穿的是同样的衣服，佩戴的是同样的装饰品，或者和大家一样赤身裸体。

Like bands, tribes lack a bureaucracy, police force, and taxes. Their economy is based on reciprocal exchanges between individuals or families, rather than on a redistribution of tribute paid to some central authority. Economic specialization is slight: full-time crafts specialists are lacking, and every able-bodied adult ^{(including the big-man)} participates in growing, gathering, or hunting food. I recall one occasion when I was walking past a garden in the Solomon Islands, saw a man digging and waving at me in the distance, and realized to my astonishment that it was a friend of mine named Faletau. He was the most famous wood carver of the Solomons, an artist of great originality—but that did not free him of the necessity to grow his own sweet potatoes. Since tribes thus lack economic specialists, they also lack slaves, because there are no specialized menial jobs for a slave to perform.

和族群一样，部落也没有行政系统、警察部门和税收机关。它们的经济以个人或家族之间的对等交换为基础，而不是以重新分配向某个中央权威交纳的贡品为基础。经济专门化的程度是微不足道的：没有全职的工艺专门人材，每个体格健全的成年人^{(包括大人物)}都要参加对食物的种植、采集和猎捕。我记得，有一次我在所罗门群岛走过一个园圃时，看见远处一个正在挖地的人向我招手，我惊讶地发现那是我的一个名叫法勒多的朋友。他是所罗门群岛最著名的木刻家，一个极富独创性的艺术家——但这并没有使他不必亲自去种甘薯。由于部落如此缺乏经济专家，它们也缺乏奴隶，因为没有适合奴隶去做的专门的低贱工作。

Just as musical composers of the classical period range from C. P. E. Bach to Schubert and thereby cover the whole spectrum from baroque composers to romantic composers, tribes also shade into bands at one extreme and into chiefdoms at the opposite extreme. In particular, a tribal big-man's role in dividing the meat of pigs slaughtered for feasts points to the role of chiefs in collecting and redistributing food and goods—now reconstrued as tribute—in chiefdoms. Similarly, presence or absence of public architecture is supposedly one of the distinctions between tribes and chiefdoms, but large New Guinea villages often have cult houses ^{(known as haus tamburan, on the Sepik River)} that presage the temples of chiefdoms.

就像古典时期作曲家，从巴赫到舒伯特，从而包括从巴罗克风格^[1]作曲家到浪漫主义作曲家的整个流派一样，部落也是从一个极端的族群渐变而来，又渐变而为另一极端的酋长管辖地。尤其是，部落在为举行盛宴而杀猪时由大人物来分配猪肉，他的这个角色预示了酋长在其管辖地收集和再分配食品和货物——现在被重新解释为贡品——中所扮演的角色。同样，有没有公共建筑物大概也是酋长管辖地和部落的区别之一，但新几内亚的一些大村庄也常常建有一些供举行膜拜仪式之用的屋子^{(以西皮克河畔的鼓屋闻名)}，它们就是酋长管辖地庙宇的前身。

ALTHOUGH A FEW bands and tribes survive today on remote and ecologically marginal lands outside state control, fully independent chiefdoms had disappeared by the early twentieth century, because they tended to occupy prime land coveted by states. However, as of A.D. 1492, chiefdoms were still widespread over much of the eastern United States, in productive areas of South and Central America and sub-Saharan Africa that had not yet been subsumed under native states, and in all of Polynesia. The archaeological evidence discussed below suggests that chiefdoms arose by around 5500 B.C. in the Fertile Crescent and by around 1000 B.C. in Mesoamerica and the Andes. Let us consider the distinctive features of chiefdoms, very different from modern European and American states and, at the same time, from bands and simple tribal societies.

虽然在国家控制之外的偏远的生态贫瘠地区今天仍然幸存着一些族群和部落，但完全独立的酋长管辖地到20世纪初就已经消失了，因为它们往往占据着使国家垂涎三尺的最好的土地。然而，直到公元1492年，酋长管辖地仍然普遍存在于美国东部的广大地区，存在于南美洲、中美洲和非洲撒哈拉沙漠以南还没有被划归土邦的物产丰富的地区以及波利尼西亚的所有地区。下面讨论的考古证据表明，酋长管辖地出现在新月沃地不迟于公元前5500年左右，出现在中美洲和安第斯山脉地区不迟于公元前1000年左右。让我们来考虑一下酋长管辖地完全不同于现代欧美国家同时也完全不同于族群和简单的部落社会的显著特点。

As regards population size, chiefdoms were considerably larger than tribes, ranging from several thousand to several tens of thousands of people. That size created serious potential for internal conflict because, for any person living in a chiefdom, the vast majority of other people in the chiefdom were neither closely related by blood or marriage nor known by name. With the rise of chiefdoms around 7,500 years ago, people had to learn, for the first time in history, how to encounter strangers regularly without attempting to kill them.

就人口的多少而言，酋长管辖地的人口比部落的人口多得多，从几千人到几万人不等。这样多的人口造成了内部冲突的严重的潜在威胁，因为对于任何一个生活在酋长管辖地的人来说，酋长管辖地的广大多数的其他人和他既没有密切的血缘关系或姻亲关系，他也叫不出他们的名字。随着大约7500年前酋长管辖地的出现，人们在历史上第一次不得不学会如何经常地去和陌生人打交道而又不想把他们杀死。

Part of the solution to that problem was for one person, the chief, to exercise a monopoly on the right to use force. In contrast to a tribe's big-man, a chief held a recognized office, filled by hereditary right. Instead of the decentralized anarchy of a village meeting, the chief was a permanent centralized authority, made all significant decisions, and had a monopoly on critical information ^{(such as what a neighboring chief was privately threatening, or what harvest the gods had supposedly promised)}. Unlike big-men, chiefs could be recognized from afar by visible distinguishing features, such as a large fan worn over the back on Rennell Island in the Southwest Pacific. A commoner encountering a chief was obliged to perform ritual marks of respect, such as ^{(on Hawaii)} prostrating oneself. The chief's orders might be transmitted through one or two levels of bureaucrats, many of whom were themselves low-ranked chiefs. However, in contrast to state bureaucrats, chiefdom bureaucrats had generalized rather than specialized roles. In Polynesian Hawaii the same bureaucrats ^{(termed konohiki)} extracted tribute and oversaw irrigation and organized labor corvées for the chief, whereas state societies have separate tax collectors, water district managers, and draft boards.

对这个问题的部分解决办法，是赋予一个人即酋长以使用武力的独占权利。与部落的大人物不同，酋长拥有得到公认的职位，并对这个职位有世袭权。和村落会议上权力分散的无政府状态不同，酋长是永远的权力中心，他作出所有的重大决定，并垄断重要的信息^{(如邻近酋长管辖地的酋长个人会构成什么样的威胁，或者诸神可能已应允赐予什么样的收获)}。和大人物不同，酋长都有醒目的标志，在远处就能认出来，如西南太平洋伦纳尔岛上的酋长背后插着一把大扇子。一个平民遇见了酋长就得按规矩做出尊敬的表示，如^{(在夏威夷)}使自己拜倒在地。酋长的命令可以通过一两级官员来传达，这些官员中有许多本身就是低级酋长。然而，与国家官员不同的是，酋长管辖地的官员什么都干，而没有专门分工。在波利尼西亚群岛的夏威夷，这些官员^{(称为科诺希基)}征收贡品和管理灌溉，并为酋长组织徭役工作，而国家社会则分别设有税收官、水利地区管理人和征兵局。

A chiefdom's large population in a small area required plenty of food, obtained by food production in most cases, by hunting-gathering in a few especially rich areas. For example, American Indians of the Pacific Northwest coast, such as the Kwakiutl, Nootka, and Tlingit Indians, lived under chiefs in villages without any agriculture or domestic animals, because the rivers and sea were so rich in salmon and halibut. The food surpluses generated by some people, relegated to the rank of commoners, went to feed the chiefs, their families, bureaucrats, and crafts specialists, who variously made canoes, adzes, or spittoons or worked as bird catchers or tattooers.

酋长管辖地在小范围内的众多人口需要大量的粮食，这些粮食在大多数情况下靠粮食生产来获得，而在一些物产特别丰富的地区则靠狩猎和采集来获得。例如，美洲太平洋西北沿岸的印第安人，如夸扣特尔族印第安人、努特卡族印第安人和特林基特族印第安人，在酋长的领导下生活在没有农业和家畜的村落里，因为那里的河流和海洋盛产鲑鱼和大比目鱼。被降级为平民的一些人所生产的多余粮食被用来养活酋长、他们的家庭、官员和从事制造独木舟、扁斧或痰盂等工作或做捕鸟人或文身匠的有一技之长的专门人材。

Luxury goods, consisting of those specialized crafts products or else rare objects obtained by long-distance trade, were reserved for chiefs. For example, Hawaiian chiefs had feather cloaks, some of them consisting of tens of thousands of feathers and requiring many human generations for their manufacture ^{(by commoner cloak makers, of course)}. That concentration of luxury goods often makes it possible to recognize chiefdoms archaeologically, by the fact that some graves ^{(those of chiefs)} contain much richer goods than other graves ^{(those of commoners)}, in contrast to the egalitarian burials of earlier human history. Some ancient complex chiefdoms can also be distinguished from tribal villages by the remains of elaborate public architecture ^{(such as temples)} and by a regional hierarchy of settlements, with one site ^{(the site of the paramount chief)} being obviously larger and having more administrative buildings and artifacts than other sites.

奢侈品有那些专门的手工制品或与远方贸易换来的珍稀物品，这些东西都归酋长所有。例如，夏威夷的一些酋长都有羽毛斗篷，有些斗篷是由几万根羽毛经过许多世代人的努力才编织成的^{(当然是由平民斗篷编织工来完成的)}。这种奢侈品的集中，使得在考古中能够认出酋长的身份，因为有些坟墓^{(酋长的坟墓)}里的陪葬物品要比另一些坟墓^{(平民的坟墓)}里的陪葬物品丰富得多，这一点和这以前的人类历史上的平等主义的墓葬是不同的。有些古代复杂的酋长管辖地也能够同部落村庄区别开来，区别的根据是精心设计的公共建筑^(如寺庙)遗迹和地区内定居点的等级，其中一处住地^{(至高无上的酋长的住地)}显然比其他住地大，其中的办公用房和人工制品也较其他住地多。

Like tribes, chiefdoms consisted of multiple hereditary lineages living at one site. However, whereas the lineages of tribal villages are equal-ranked clans, in a chiefdom all members of the chief's lineage had hereditary perquisites. In effect, the society was divided into hereditary chief and commoner classes, with Hawaiian chiefs themselves subdivided into eight hierarchically ranked lineages, each concentrating its marriages within its own lineage. Furthermore, since chiefs required menial servants as well as specialized craftspeople, chiefdoms differed from tribes in having many jobs that could be filled by slaves, typically obtained by capture in raids.

与部落一样，酋长管辖地由多个生活在一个住地的世袭家族组成。不过，部落村庄里的家族是地位平等的氏族，而酋长管辖地的酋长家族的所有成员都享有世袭的特权。事实上，这个社会被分为世袭酋长和平民阶级两种人，而夏威夷的酋长本身又再分为8个等级森严的家族，每一个家族只能在家族内部通婚。此外，由于酋长不但需要有专长的手艺人，而且也需干粗活的仆人，因此酋长管辖地和部落的又一个区别是前者设有许多可以由奴隶来担任的工作，而这些奴隶一般都是在对外劫掠中俘获来的。

The most distinctive economic feature of chiefdoms was their shift from reliance solely on the reciprocal exchanges characteristic of bands and tribes, by which A gives B a gift while expecting that B at some unspecified future time will give a gift of comparable value to A. We modern state dwellers indulge in such behavior on birthdays and holidays, but most of our flow of goods is achieved instead by buying and selling for money according to the law of supply and demand. While continuing reciprocal exchanges and without marketing or money, chiefdoms developed an additional new system termed a redistributive economy. A simple example would involve a chief receiving wheat at harvest time from every farmer in the chiefdom, then throwing a feast for everybody and serving bread or else storing the wheat and gradually giving it out again in the months between harvests. When a large portion of the goods received from commoners was not redistributed to them but was retained and consumed by the chiefly lineages and craftspeople, the redistribution became tribute, a precursor of taxes that made its first appearance in chiefdoms. From the commoners the chiefs claimed not only goods but also labor for construction of public works, which again might return to benefit the commoners ^{(for example, irrigation systems to help feed everybody)} or instead benefited mainly the chiefs ^{(for instance, lavish tombs)}.

酋长管辖地在经济上的最显著特点是：它们已开始改变完全依赖那种为族群和部落所特有的对等交换的办法，根据这种办法，A送给B一个礼物，同时又指望B在将来某个未特别规定的时间把一个类似价值的礼物送给A。我们现代国家的居民只有在生日和假日才这样做，但我们的大多数商品流通都是按照供需规律进行金钱买卖来实现的。酋长管辖地在继续实行对等交换和没有市场买卖或货币的同时，发展出了另一种叫做再分配经济的新制度。一个简单的例子是：酋长在收获季节从他的管辖地的每一个农民那里收到了小麦，然后宴请大家吃面包，或者把小麦贮藏起来，再在下次收获之前的日子里把小麦逐步地分配给大家。如果从平民那里收到的很大一部分货物不是再分配给他们，而是留给酋长的家族和手艺人消费，这种再分配就变成了进贡，也就是首次在酋长管辖地出现的税收前身。酋长不但向平民索取财物，而且还要求他们提供建设公共工程的劳动力，而这又一次可能对平民有利^{(例如有助于养活每一个人的灌溉系统)}，要不然那就主要对酋长们有利了^{(例如穷奢极侈的墓葬)}。

We have been talking about chiefdoms generically, as if they were all the same. In fact, chiefdoms varied considerably. Larger ones tended to have more powerful chiefs, more ranks of chiefly lineages, greater distinctions between chiefs and commoners, more retention of tribute by the chiefs, more layers of bureaucrats, and grander public architecture. For instance, societies on small Polynesian islands were effectively rather similar to tribal societies with a big-man, except that the position of chief was hereditary. The chief's hut looked like any other hut, there were no bureaucrats or public works, the chief redistributed most goods he received back to the commoners, and land was controlled by the community. But on the largest Polynesian islands, such as Hawaii, Tahiti, and Tonga, chiefs were recognizable at a glance by their ornaments, public works were erected by large labor forces, most tribute was retained by the chiefs, and all land was controlled by them. A further gradation among societies with ranked lineages was from those where the political unit was a single autonomous village, to those consisting of a regional assemblage of villages in which the largest village with a paramount chief controlled the smaller villages with lesser chiefs.

我们对酋长管辖地进行了一般性的讨论，似乎它们全都是一个模式。事实上，酋长管辖地的差别是很大的。在较大的酋长管辖地，酋长的权力更大，酋长家族的等级更多，酋长和平民之间的差异更明显，酋长保留的贡物更多，官员的层次更多，公共建筑也更宏伟。例如，波利尼西亚的小岛上的社会实际上与有大人物的部落社会颇为相似，只不过酋长这个职位是世袭的罢了。酋长住的简陋小屋看上去同任何其他简陋的小屋一样，那里没有官员，也没有公共建筑，酋长把他收到的大多数财物重新分配给平民，土地则由社区来管理。但在波利尼西亚最大的岛如夏威夷岛、塔希提岛和汤加岛上，酋长靠他们的装饰一眼就可以认出来，公共建筑是靠大批劳动力来修建的，大部分贡物都被酋长留下了，并且所有土地也为他们所控制。在家族分成等级的社会中，政治单位就是一个自治村庄的社会，又进一步演化为由整个地区内一批村庄集合而成的社会，而在这一批村庄中，有一个至高无上的酋长的那个最大的村庄控制着只有次要酋长的较小的村庄。

BY NOW, IT should be obvious that chiefdoms introduced the dilemma fundamental to all centrally governed, nonegalitarian societies. At best, they do good by providing expensive services impossible to contract for on an individual basis. At worst, they function unabashedly as kleptocracies, transferring net wealth from commoners to upper classes. These noble and selfish functions are inextricably linked, although some governments emphasize much more of one function than of the other. The difference between a kleptocrat and a wise statesman, between a robber baron and a public benefactor, is merely one of degree: a matter of just how large a percentage of the tribute extracted from producers is retained by the elite, and how much the commoners like the public uses to which the redistributed tribute is put. We consider President Mobutu of Zaire a kleptocrat because he keeps too much tribute ^{(the equivalent of billions of dollars)} and redistributes too little tribute ^{(no functioning telephone system in Zaire)}. We consider George Washington a statesman because he spent tax money on widely admired programs and did not enrich himself as president. Nevertheless, George Washington was born into wealth, which is much more unequally distributed in the United States than in New Guinea villages.

至此，有一点应该是显而易见的，这就是酋长管辖地带来了对集中管理的、非平等主义社会来说带有根本性质的两难处境。从最好的方面说，它们可以提供个人无法承办的昂贵服务。从最坏的方面说，它们公然地在起着盗贼统治的作用，把实际财富从平民手中转移到上层阶级手中。这种高尚和自私的双重作用难分难解地联系在一起，虽然有些政府强调一种作用要大大多于强调另一种作用。盗贼统治者和英明政治家的区别，强盗贵族和公益赞助人的区别，只是程度不同而已：这只是一个从生产者那里榨取来的财物有多少被上层人物留下来的问题，是平民对把重新分配的财物用于公共目的喜欢到什么程度的问题。我们认为扎伊尔的蒙博托总统就是一个盗贼统治者，因为他把太多的财物^{(相当于几十亿美元)}据为己有，而把太少的财物拿来重新分配^{(在扎伊尔没有可以实际使用的电话系统)}。我们认为乔治·华盛顿是一个政治家，因为他把税款用于受到广泛赞誉的计划，而不是中饱总统的私囊。不过，华盛顿是生而富有的，而财富的分配在美国要比在新几内亚的村庄不公平得多。

For any ranked society, whether a chiefdom or a state, one thus has to ask: why do the commoners tolerate the transfer of the fruits of their hard labor to kleptocrats? This question, raised by political theorists from Plato to Marx, is raised anew by voters in every modern election. Kleptocracies with little public support run the risk of being overthrown, either by downtrodden commoners or by upstart would-be replacement kleptocrats seeking public support by promising a higher ratio of services rendered to fruits stolen. For example, Hawaiian history was repeatedly punctuated by revolts against repressive chiefs, usually led by younger brothers promising less oppression. This may sound funny to us in the context of old Hawaii, until we reflect on all the misery still being caused by such struggles in the modern world.

对于任何等级社会，无论是酋长管辖地或是国家，人们于是不禁要问，为什么平民会容忍把他们艰苦劳动的成果奉送给盗贼统治者？从柏拉图到马克思的所有政治理论家都提出过这个问题，在现代的每一次选举中选民们又重新提出了这个问题。得不到公众支持的盗贼统治者有被推翻的危险，不是被受压迫的平民所推翻，就是被暴发的想要取而代之的盗贼统治者所推翻，这些新贵们用许诺为被窃取的果实提供更多服务的办法来谋求公众的支持。例如，夏威夷的历史上曾不断出现过反对压迫者酋长的叛乱，而这些叛乱通常又都是由许诺减轻压迫的酋长的兄弟们领导的。从过去夏威夷的情况来看，我们也许会觉得这听起来滑稽可笑，但只要我们考虑一下这种斗争在现代世界所造成的种种苦难，我们就不会有这种感觉了。

What should an elite do to gain popular support while still maintaining a more comfortable lifestyle than commoners? Kleptocrats throughout the ages have resorted to a mixture of four solutions:

一个上层人物在仍然保持比平民舒服的生活方式时，要怎样做才能获得群众的支持呢？从古至今的盗贼统治者混合使用了4种办法：

1. Disarm the populace, and arm the elite. That's much easier in these days of high-tech weaponry, produced only in industrial plants and easily monopolized by an elite, than in ancient times of spears and clubs easily made at home.

1．解除平民的武装，同时武装上层掌权人物。这在使用高科技武器的现代比使用长矛和棍棒的古代容易得多，因为现代的武器只有在工厂里才能生产，也容易被上层人物所垄断，而古代的武器在家里就能容易地制造出来。

2. Make the masses happy by redistributing much of the tribute received, in popular ways. This principle was as valid for Hawaiian chiefs as it is for American politicians today.

2．用通行的方法把得到的财物的很大一部分再分配给群众来博取他们的欢心。这个原则对过去的夏威夷的酋长与对今天的美国政治家同样有效。

3. Use the monopoly of force to promote happiness, by maintaining public order and curbing violence. This is potentially a big and underappreciated advantage of centralized societies over noncentralized ones. Anthropologists formerly idealized band and tribal societies as gentle and nonviolent, because visiting anthropologists observed no murder in a band of 25 people in the course of a three-year study. Of course they didn't: it's easy to calculate that a band of a dozen adults and a dozen children, subject to the inevitable deaths occurring anyway for the usual reasons other than murder, could not perpetuate itself if in addition one of its dozen adults murdered another adult every three years. Much more extensive long-term information about band and tribal societies reveals that murder is a leading cause of death. For example, I happened to be visiting New Guinea's Iyau people at a time when a woman anthropologist was interviewing Iyau women about their life histories. Woman after woman, when asked to name her husband, named several sequential husbands who had died violent deaths. A typical answer went like this: “My first husband was killed by Elopi raiders. My second husband was killed by a man who wanted me, and who became my third husband. That husband was killed by the brother of my second husband, seeking to avenge his murder.” Such biographies prove common for so-called gentle tribespeople and contributed to the acceptance of centralized authority as tribal societies grew larger.

3．利用对武力的绝对控制来维持公共秩序和制止暴力以促进社会幸福。这可能是中央集权的社会对非中央集权的社会的一个巨大的、未得到正确评价的优势。人类学家以前把族群社会和部落社会理想化了，说它们是温和的没有暴力的社会，因为一些访问的人类学家对一个25人的族群经过3年的研究，竟没有发现一例谋杀事件。他们当然不会发现：一个由十来个成年人和十来个儿童组成的族群，由于谋杀以外的通常原因，还常常要碰到一些无论如何都必然发生的死亡，如果在这些死亡之外，在这十来个成年人中有一个每隔3年杀死另一个成年人，那么这个族群本身就不可能长久存在下去，这一点是很容易计算出来的。关于族群社会和部落社会的广泛得多的长期积累的资料表明，谋杀是死亡的首要原因。例如，当一位女人类学家在向新几内亚伊亚乌族妇女调查她们的生活史时，我碰巧也在访问伊亚乌人。当一个又一个女人被要求说一说她的丈夫时，她会说出一连几个死于非命的丈夫。典型的回答是这样的：“我的第一个丈夫被埃洛皮族的袭击者杀死了。我的第二个丈夫被一个想要我的人杀死了，这个人就成了我的第三个丈夫。这个丈夫又被我第二个丈夫的兄弟在为他哥哥报仇时杀死了。”此类生活遭遇对于所谓温和的部落民来说竟是家常便饭，因此，随着部落社会的扩大，这种情况就对接受中央权威起了促进作用。

4. The remaining way for kleptocrats to gain public support is to construct an ideology or religion justifying kleptocracy. Bands and tribes already had supernatural beliefs, just as do modern established religions. But the supernatural beliefs of bands and tribes did not serve to justify central authority, justify transfer of wealth, or maintain peace between unrelated individuals. When supernatural beliefs gained those functions and became institutionalized, they were thereby transformed into what we term a religion. Hawaiian chiefs were typical of chiefs elsewhere, in asserting divinity, divine descent, or at least a hotline to the gods. The chief claimed to serve the people by interceding for them with the gods and reciting the ritual formulas required to obtain rain, good harvests, and success in fishing.

4．盗贼统治者为了得到公众支持而使用的最后一个方法，是制造一种为盗贼统治辩护的意识形态或宗教。族群和部落本来就都相信鬼神，就像现代的国教一样。但是，族群和部落的相信鬼神，并不能被用来为中央权威辩护和为财富的转移辩护，也不能被用来维持没有亲属关系的人们之间的和平。当对鬼神的迷信获得了这些功能并被制度化之后，它们也就变成了我们所说的宗教。夏威夷的酋长们在宣传神性、神灵降世或至少与诸神沟通方面，可为其他地方酋长的代表。酋长声称，他为人民服务就是为他们向诸神说情和在仪式上吟诵为求得雨水、好年成和捕鱼成功所必需的咒语。

Chiefdoms characteristically have an ideology, precursor to an institutionalized religion, that buttresses the chief's authority. The chief may either combine the offices of political leader and priest in a single person, or may support a separate group of kleptocrats ^{(that is, priests)} whose function is to provide ideological justification for the chiefs. That is why chiefdoms devote so much collected tribute to constructing temples and other public works, which serve as centers of the official religion and visible signs of the chief's power.

酋长管辖地都有一种独特的意识形态，它是有组织的宗教的前身，维持着酋长的权威。酋长可以一身而兼政治领袖和祭司的两个职务，也可以支持单独一个盗贼统治者集团^(即祭司)，而这个集团的职责就是在意识形态上为酋长提供辩护。这就是为什么酋长管辖地要把如此大量地征收来的财物专门用来建造寺庙及其他公共工程，因为这些建筑可以用作官方宗教的中心和酋长权力的醒目标志。

Besides justifying the transfer of wealth to kleptocrats, institutionalized religion brings two other important benefits to centralized societies. First, shared ideology or religion helps solve the problem of how unrelated individuals are to live together without killing each other—by providing them with a bond not based on kinship. Second, it gives people a motive, other than genetic self-interest, for sacrificing their lives on behalf of others. At the cost of a few society members who die in battle as soldiers, the whole society becomes much more effective at conquering other societies or resisting attacks.

除了为财富转移给盗贼统治者进行辩护外，有组织的宗教还为中央集权的社会带来了另外两个重大的好处。第一个好处是，共同的意识形态或宗教有助于解决没有亲属关系的人们应如何共处而不致互相残杀这个问题——办法就是为他们规定一种不是以亲属关系为基础的约束。第二个好处是，它使人们产生了一种为别人而牺牲自己生命的动机，而不是产生利己之心。以少数社会成员战死沙场为代价，整个社会就会在征服其他社会或抵御外侮时变得更加有效。

THE POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, and social institutions most familiar to us today are those of states, which now rule all of the world's land area except for Antarctica. Many early states and all modern ones have had literate elites, and many modern states have literate masses as well. Vanished states tended to leave visible archaeological hallmarks, such as ruins of temples with standardized designs, at least four levels of settlement sizes, and pottery styles covering tens of thousands of square miles. We thereby know that states arose around 3700 B.C. in Mesopotamia and around 300 B.C. in Mesoamerica, over 2,000 years ago in the Andes, China, and Southeast Asia, and over 1,000 years ago in West Africa. In modern times the formation of states out of chiefdoms has been observed repeatedly. Thus, we possess much more information about past states and their formation than about past chiefdoms, tribes, and bands.

我们今天最熟悉的政治、经济和社会制度就是国家制度，这种制度如今统治着世界上除南极以外的所有地区。许多早期国家和所有现代国家都有有文化的精英，许多现代国家还有有文化的群众。消失了的国家往往留下了明显的考古标志，如有标准化设计的庙宇的废墟，至少有4种不同规模的定居点，以及几万英里范围内的各种风格的陶器。我们由此知道，国家在公元前3700年左右出现于美索不达米亚，公元前300年左右出现于中美洲，2000多年前出现于安第斯山脉地区、中国和东南亚，1000多年前出现于西非。在现代，人们不断看到由酋长管辖地形成国家的情况。因此，关于过去的国家及其形成，我们所掌握的知识远远多于关于过去的酋长管辖地、部落和族群的知识。

Protostates extend many features of large paramount ^{(multivillage)} chiefdoms. They continue the increase in size from bands to tribes to chiefdoms. Whereas chiefdoms' populations range from a few thousand to a few tens of thousands, the populations of most modern states exceed one million, and China's exceeds one billion. The paramount chief's location may become the state's capital city. Other population centers of states outside the capital may also qualify as true cities, which are lacking in chiefdoms. Cities differ from villages in their monumental public works, palaces of rulers, accumulation of capital from tribute or taxes, and concentration of people other than food producers.

原型国家发展了大型的最重要的^{(由多个村庄组成的)}酋长管辖地的许多特点。它们的规模从族群到部落，再从部落到酋长管辖地，不断地扩大。酋长管辖地的人口少则几千，多则几万，而大多数现代国家的人口都超过100万，中国的人口则超过10亿。最重要的酋长居住地可能成为这个国家的首都城市。首都以外的其他人口中心也可能取得真正城市的资格，而这些城市是酋长管辖地所没有的。城市与村庄的区别是城市有重要的公共工程，有统治者居住的宫殿，有来自贡物和税收的资本积累，还有粮食生产者以外的集中的人口。

Early states had a hereditary leader with a title equivalent to king, like a super paramount chief and exercising an even greater monopoly of information, decision making, and power. Even in democracies today, crucial knowledge is available to only a few individuals, who control the flow of information to the rest of the government and consequently control decisions. For instance, in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, information and discussions that determined whether nuclear war would engulf half a billion people were initially confined by President Kennedy to a ten-member executive committee of the National Security Council that he himself appointed; then he limited final decisions to a four-member group consisting of himself and three of his cabinet ministers.

早期的国家有一个资格相当于国王的世袭领袖，他很像一个超级的至高无上的酋长，对信息、决策和权力实行甚至更大的垄断。即使在今天的民主国家里，至关重要的知识也只有少数人能够获得，他们对信息流向政府的其余部门进行控制，结果也就是对决策进行控制。例如，在1963年的古巴导弹危机中，开始时肯尼迪总统把关于确定核战争是否会吞没5亿人的信息和讨论，限制在他亲自任命的国家安全委员会10人执行委员会的范围内；后来，他又把最后决定权限制在由他本人和他的3名内阁部长组成的4人小组范围内。

Central control is more far-reaching, and economic redistribution in the form of tribute ^{(renamed taxes)} more extensive, in states than in chiefdoms. Economic specialization is more extreme, to the point where today not even farmers remain self-sufficient. Hence the effect on society is catastrophic when state government collapses, as happened in Britain upon the removal of Roman troops, administrators, and coinage between A.D. 407 and 411. Even the earliest Mesopotamian states exercised centralized control of their economies. Their food was produced by four specialist groups ^{(cereal farmers, herders, fishermen, and orchard and garden growers)}, from each of which the state took the produce and to each of which it gave out the necessary supplies, tools, and foods other than the type of food that this group produced. The state supplied seeds and plow animals to the cereal farmers, took wool from the herders, exchanged the wool by long-distance trade for metal and other essential raw materials, and paid out food rations to the laborers who maintained the irrigation systems on which the farmers depended.

中央控制在国家中比在酋长管辖地更加影响深远，而以贡物^{(改名为税收)}形式进行的经济再分配在国家中也比在酋长管辖地更加广泛。经济专门化进一步走向极端，以致今天甚至农民也无法维持自给自足。因此，当国家的政府垮台时，社会所受到的影响产生了灾难性的结果，就像不列颠在罗马于公元407年至411年撤走军队、行政官员和硬币时所碰到的情况那样。甚至最早的美索不达米亚国家对它们的经济也实行中央控制。它们的粮食是由4个专业群体^{(生产谷物的农民、牧人、渔民以及果园和菜园的种植者)}生产的，国家从每一个群体那里得到产品，又向每一个群体分配必需的日常用品、工具和这个集团所不生产的食物。国家向种植谷物的农民供应种子和耕畜，从牧人那里得到羊毛，通过远方贸易用羊毛交换金属制品和其他必不可少的原料，并向维护农民所依赖的灌溉系统的劳动者发放粮食。

Many, perhaps most, early states adopted slavery on a much larger scale than did chiefdoms. That was not because chiefdoms were more kindly disposed toward defeated enemies but because the greater economic specialization of states, with more mass production and more public works, provided more uses for slave labor. In addition, the larger scale of state warfare made more captives available.

许多早期国家，也许是大多数早期国家，都曾经历过奴隶制，其规模比酋长管辖地大得多。这不是因为酋长管辖地在处理被打败的敌人时更加宽大为怀，而是因为国家经济专门化的发展，更多的大规模生产和更多的公共工程需要使用更多的奴隶劳动。此外，更大规模的国家战争能够得到更多的俘虏。

A chiefdom's one or two levels of administration are greatly multiplied in states, as anyone who has seen an organizational chart of any government knows. Along with the proliferation of vertical levels of bureaucrats, there is also horizontal specialization. Instead of konohiki carrying out every aspect of administration for a Hawaiian district, state governments have several separate departments, each with its own hierarchy, to handle water management, taxes, military draft, and so on. Even small states have more complex bureaucracies than large chiefdoms. For instance, the West African state of Maradi had a central administration with over 130 titled offices.

酋长管辖地原来只有一两个行政管理层，而在国家里行政管理层次就大大增加了，任何人只要见过任何政府的组织系统图就会知道这一点。除了纵向的各级官员大大增加外，还有横向的专业部门。酋长管辖地的官员科诺希基要负责夏威夷一个地区的所有行政事务，而国家的政府则不同，它分为几个不同的部门，分别处理水利管理、税收和征兵等事宜，而每一个部门又都有自己的一套等级系统。即使是小国的行政系统也要比大的酋长管辖地来得复杂。例如，西非国家马拉迪^[2]就曾建立过一个中央政府，光是有头衔的职位就达130多个。

Internal conflict resolution within states has become increasingly formalized by laws, a judiciary, and police. The laws are often written, because many states ^{(with conspicuous exceptions, such as that of the Incas)} have had literate elites, writing having been developed around the same time as the formation of the earliest states in both Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica. In contrast, no early chiefdom not on the verge of statehood developed writing.

为了解决国家内部的冲突，法律、法制和警察机关越来越正规化了。法律经常得到制订，因为许多国家^{(也有显著的例外，如印加帝国)}都有有文化的上层精英，而文字也已在差不多与最早的国家于美索不达米亚和中美洲出现的同时被发明了出来。相比之下，还没有形成国家的早期酋长管辖地没有一个发明过文字。

Early states had state religions and standardized temples. Many early kings were considered divine and were accorded special treatment in innumerable respects. For example, the Aztec and Inca emperors were both carried about in litters; servants went ahead of the Inca emperor's litter and swept the ground clear; and the Japanese language includes special forms of the pronoun “you” for use only in addressing the emperor. Early kings were themselves the head of the state religion or else had separate high priests. The Mesopotamian temple was the center not only of religion but also of economic redistribution, writing, and crafts technology.

早期的国家已有了国家的宗教和标准化的寺庙。许多早期的国王被看作是神授的，并在无数方面被给予特殊的待遇。例如，阿兹特克和印加的皇帝出行都用轿子抬着；仆人们走在印加皇帝轿子的前头清扫地面；而日本语中有特殊形式的代词“你”，专门用来称呼天皇。早期的国王本人就是国家宗教的领袖，否则就另外设立一个大祭司。美索不达米亚的寺庙不但是宗教活动的中心，而且也是经济再分配、文字和手工技术的中心。

All these features of states carry to an extreme the developments that led from tribes to chiefdoms. In addition, though, states have diverged from chiefdoms in several new directions. The most fundamental such distinction is that states are organized on political and territorial lines, not on the kinship lines that defined bands, tribes, and simple chiefdoms. Furthermore, bands and tribes always, and chiefdoms usually, consist of a single ethnic and linguistic group. States, though—especially so-called empires formed by amalgamation or conquest of states—are regularly multiethnic and multilingual. State bureaucrats are not selected mainly on the basis of kinship, as in chiefdoms, but are professionals selected at least partly on the basis of training and ability. In later states, including most today, the leadership often became nonhereditary, and many states abandoned the entire system of formal hereditary classes carried over from chiefdoms.

国家的所有这些特征，把从部落到酋长管辖地的发展引向了极端。不过，除此以外，国家还是从酋长管辖地沿几个不同方向演化的结果。这方面最根本的差别是，国家是按政治和领土而组建起来，不是按照划分族群、部落和简单的酋长管辖地的亲属关系而组建起来的。而且，族群和部落始终是由单一的族群和语族组成的，酋长管辖地通常也是如此。然而，国家——尤其是通过对一些国家的合并或征服而形成的帝国——通常都是包括不同种族和使用多种语言的。在后期的国家中，包括今天大多数国家在内，领导常常变成非世袭的，而且许多国家放弃了酋长管辖地遗留下来的关于正式世袭阶级的整个制度。

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. Obviously, that is no more than an average long-term trend, with innumerable shifts in either direction: 1,000 amalgamations for 999 reversals. We know from our daily newspaper that large units ^{(for instance, the former USSR, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia)} can disintegrate into smaller units, as did Alexander of Macedon's empire over 2,000 years ago. More complex units don't always conquer less complex ones but may succumb to them, as when the Roman and Chinese Empires were overrun by “barbarian” and Mongol chiefdoms, respectively. But the long-term trend has still been toward large, complex societies, culminating in states.

在过去的13000年中，人类社会的主要趋势都是较大的、较复杂的单位取代较小的、较不复杂的单位。显然，这只是就一般的长期趋势来说的，古往今来都有数不清的变化：有1000次的统一便会有999次的分裂。我们从报纸上了解到，一些大的单位^{(例如前苏联、南斯拉夫和捷克斯洛伐克)}有时也会分裂成一些较小的单位，就像2000多年前马其顿的亚历山大^[3]的帝国一样。比较复杂的单位并不总是能征服不那么复杂的单位，有许多反而屈服于后者，就像罗马帝国和中华帝国分别为“蛮族”和蒙古族酋长管辖地所蹂躏那样。但长期趋势仍然有利于最后上升为国家的一些大的复杂的社会。

Obviously, too, part of the reason for states' triumphs over simpler entities when the two collide is that states usually enjoy an advantage of weaponry and other technology, and a large numerical advantage in population. But there are also two other potential advantages inherent in chiefdoms and states. First, a centralized decision maker has the advantage at concentrating troops and resources. Second, the official religions and patriotic fervor of many states make their troops willing to fight suicidally.

同样明显的是，国家在与较简单的实体发生冲突时所以能取得胜利，部分原因是国家拥有武器和其他技术方面的优势，同时也拥有人口数量上的优势。但酋长管辖地和国家还有另外两个固有的潜在优势。首先，中央决策者拥有集中军队和资源的优势。其次，许多国家的官方宗教和爱国热忱使它们的军队在作战中视死如归，心甘情愿地为国捐躯。

The latter willingness is one so strongly programmed into us citizens of modern states, by our schools and churches and governments, that we forget what a radical break it marks with previous human history. Every state has its slogan urging its citizens to be prepared to die if necessary for the state: Britain's “For King and Country,” Spain's “Por Dios y Espa a,” and so on. Similar sentiments motivated 16th-century Aztec warriors: “There is nothing like death in war, nothing like the flowery death so precious to Him [the Aztec national god Huitzilopochtli] who gives life: far off I see it, my heart yearns for it!”

在现代国家中，乐于为国牺牲的思想由我们的学校、教会和政府大力灌输给我们公民，使我们忘记了它标志着同以往人类历史的彻底决裂。每一个国家都有自己的鼓动其公民准备好在必要时为国牺牲的口号：英国的口号是“为了国王和国家”，西班牙的口号是“为了上帝和西班牙”，等等。同样的思想感情也在激励着16世纪阿兹特克的战士：“战死沙场最最光荣，给我们以生命的神^{(阿兹特克的民族之神维茨罗波切特里)}最最看重这种光荣的死：我远远看见了它，我的内心充满了对它的渴望！”

Such sentiments are unthinkable in bands and tribes. In all the accounts that my New Guinea friends have given me of their former tribal wars, there has been not a single hint of tribal patriotism, of a suicidal charge, or of any other military conduct carrying an accepted risk of being killed. Instead, raids are initiated by ambush or by superior force, so as to minimize at all costs the risk that one might die for one's village. But that attitude severely limits the military options of tribes, compared with state societies. Naturally, what makes patriotic and religious fanatics such dangerous opponents is not the deaths of the fanatics themselves, but their willingness to accept the deaths of a fraction of their number in order to annihilate or crush their infidel enemy. Fanaticism in war, of the type that drove recorded Christian and Islamic conquests, was probably unknown on Earth until chiefdoms and especially states emerged within the last 6,000 years.

这种思想感情在族群和部落中是无法想象的。我的新几内亚的朋友们对我谈起过他们以前的部落战争，但在他们的全部描述中看不出有丝毫的部落爱国主义、自杀性的冲锋，也没有任何不惜冒生命危险而采取的军事行动。相反，进行袭击都是采用埋伏或优势兵力的办法，千方百计地把为自己村庄牺牲性命的风险减少到最低限度。但和国家社会相比，这种态度严重限制了部落的军事选择。当然，把狂热的爱国者和宗教信徒变成这种危险对手的，不是这些狂热分子本身的死，而是他们的意愿，即不惜以他们一部分人的死来换取消灭或制服他们的异教徒敌人。在过去的6000年中，在酋长管辖地尤其是国家出现之前，历史上记载的驱使基督教和伊斯兰教信徒去进行征服的那种战争狂热，地球上大概还不曾有过。

HOW DID SMALL, noncentralized, kin-based societies evolve into large centralized ones in which most members are not closely related to each other? Having reviewed the stages in this transformation from bands to states, we now ask what impelled societies thus to transform themselves.

小型的、非中央集权的、以亲属关系为基础的社会，是怎样演化为大型的、中央集权的、大多数成员彼此没有密切的亲属关系的社会的呢？在回顾了从族群到国家这一转变的各个阶段之后，我们现在要问：是什么迫使社会产生这样的转变？

At many moments in history, states have arisen independently—or, as cultural anthropologists say, “pristinely,” that is, in the absence of any preexisting surrounding states. Pristine state origins took place at least once, possibly many times, on each of the continents except Australia and North America. Prehistoric states included those of Mesopotamia, North China, the Nile and Indus Valleys, Mesoamerica, the Andes, and West Africa. Native states in contact with European states have arisen from chiefdoms repeatedly in the last three centuries in Madagascar, Hawaii, Tahiti, and many parts of Africa. Chiefdoms have arisen pristinely even more often, in all of the same regions and in North America's Southeast and Pacific Northwest, the Amazon, Polynesia, and sub-Saharan Africa. All these origins of complex societies give us a rich database for understanding their development.

在历史上的许多时候，有些国家独立地出现了——或者，就像文化人类学家所说的那样，“最早地”出现了，就是说，在周围没有任何国家先于它们而存在的情况下出现了。最早国家的出现，除了澳大利亚和北美洲外，在其他每一个大陆上至少发生过一次，也许发生过许多次。史前的国家包括美索不达米亚、中国北部、尼罗河和印度河河谷、中美洲、安第斯山脉地区和西非的那些国家。过去的3个世纪中，在马达加斯加、夏威夷、塔希提和非洲的许多地方，由于同欧洲国家的接触，在一些酋长管辖地不断出现了土邦。在所有这些地区和北美洲的东南部、西北太平洋地区、亚马孙河地区、波利尼西亚以及非洲撒哈拉沙漠以南地区，甚至更经常地出现了一些最早的酋长管辖地。所有这些复杂社会的出现，使我们获得了一个丰富的资料库来了解其发展进程。

Of the many theories addressing the problem of state origins, the simplest denies that there is any problem to solve. Aristotle considered states the natural condition of human society, requiring no explanation. His error was understandable, because all the societies with which he would have been acquainted—Greek societies of the fourth century B.C.—were states. However, we now know that, as of A.D. 1492, much of the world was instead organized into chiefdoms, tribes, or bands. State formation does demand an explanation.

在处理国家起源问题的许多理论中，最简单的理论否认有任何问题需要解决。亚里斯多德认为国家就是人类社会的自然状态，不需要作任何说明。他的错误是可以理解的，因为所有他可能认识的社会——公元前4世纪的希腊社会——都是国家。然而，我们现在知道，直到公元1492年，世界上很大一部分地区仍然是酋长管辖地、部落或族群的天下。国家的形成的确需要予以说明。

The next theory is the most familiar one. The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau speculated that states are formed by a social contract, a rational decision reached when people calculated their self-interest, came to the agreement that they would be better off in a state than in simpler societies, and voluntarily did away with their simpler societies. But observation and historical records have failed to uncover a single case of a state's being formed in that ethereal atmosphere of dispassionate farsightedness. Smaller units do not voluntarily abandon their sovereignty and merge into larger units. They do so only by conquest, or under external duress.

第二种理论是大家最熟悉的。法国哲学家让－雅克·卢梭推断说，国家是按照一种社会契约来组成的，人们在计算自身的利益时作出了理性的决定，一致同意他们的经济情况在国家中会比在较简单的社会中更好，因而自愿地废除他们的较简单的社会。但我们的观察和历史记载，都没有揭示出有哪一个例子可以证明国家是在表现出冷静的远见的轻松优雅的气氛中组成的。较小的单位不会自愿地放弃自己的主权去合并成较大的单位。只有通过征服或在外部的胁迫下，它们才会这样去做。

A third theory, still popular with some historians and economists, sets out from the undoubted fact that, in both Mesopotamia and North China and Mexico, large-scale irrigation systems began to be constructed around the time that states started to emerge. The theory also notes that any big, complex system for irrigation or hydraulic management requires a centralized bureaucracy to construct and maintain it. The theory then turns an observed rough correlation in time into a postulated chain of cause and effect. Supposedly, Mesopotamians and North Chinese and Mexicans foresaw the advantages that a large-scale irrigation system would bring them, even though there was at the time no such system within thousands of miles ^{(or anywhere on Earth)} to illustrate for them those advantages. Those farsighted people chose to merge their inefficient little chiefdoms into a larger state capable of blessing them with large-scale irrigation.

第三种理论甚至更能得到历史学家和经济学家的喜爱。这个理论从一个无可争辩的事实出发，认为在美索不达米亚、中国北部和墨西哥，大规模的灌溉系统大概是在国家开始出现那个时期开始兴建的。这个理论还指出，任何大型的复杂的灌溉系统或水利管理，都需要有集中统一的行政系统来予以修建和维护。接着，这个理论又把一种观察到的在时间上的初步联系变成了一种假定的因果关系链。美索不达米亚、中国北部和墨西哥的居民大概预见到大规模的灌溉系统可能会带给他们的利益，虽然当时在几千英里范围内^{(或地球上任何地方)}并没有这样的系统可以向他们证明这些利益。这些有远见的人决心把他们的效率低下的小小的酋长管辖地合并成一个较大的能够使他们有幸得到大规模灌溉的国家。

However, this “hydraulic theory” of state formation is subject to the same objections leveled against social contract theories in general. More specifically, it addresses only the final stage in the evolution of complex societies. It says nothing about what drove the progression from bands to tribes to chiefdoms during all the millennia before the prospect of large-scale irrigation loomed up on the horizon. When historical or archaeological dates are examined in detail, they fail to support the view of irrigation as the driving force for state formation. In Mesopotamia, North China, Mexico, and Madagascar, small-scale irrigation systems already existed before the rise of states. Construction of large-scale irrigation systems did not accompany the emergence of states but came only significantly later in each of those areas. In most of the states formed over the Maya area of Mesoamerica and the Andes, irrigation systems always remained small-scale ones that local communities could build and maintain themselves. Thus, even in those areas where complex systems of hydraulic management did emerge, they were a secondary consequence of states that must have formed for other reasons.

然而，这种关于国家形成的“水利理论”遭到了一般契约理论所遭到的同样的反对。更具体地说，它所涉及的只是复杂社会进化过程中的最后阶段。至于大规模灌溉有可能出现之前的整整几千年中，是什么推动了从族群到部落再到酋长管辖地的发展，它却只字未提。经过详细研究的历史年代或考古年代，也未能支持关于灌溉是国家形成的推动力这一观点。在美索不达米亚、中国北部、墨西哥和马达加斯加，小规模的灌溉系统在国家出现前便已存在了。大规模灌溉系统的兴建与国家的出现并不是同时发生的，在这些地区兴建重要的灌溉系统还是以后的事。在中美洲和安第斯山脉地区形成的大多数国家中，灌溉系统始终是小规模的，当地社会依靠自己的力量就可修建和维护。因此，即使在的确出现了复杂的水利管理系统的那些地区，这些系统也只是国家形成的间接结果，而国家的形成必定另有原因。

What seems to me to point to a fundamentally correct view of state formation is an undoubted fact of much wider validity than the correlation between irrigation and the formation of some states—namely, that the size of the regional population is the strongest single predictor of societal complexity. As we have seen, bands number a few dozen individuals, tribes a few hundred, chiefdoms a few thousand to a few tens of thousands, and states generally over about 50,000. In addition to that coarse correlation between regional population size and type of society ^{(band, tribe, and so on)}, there is a finer trend, within each of those categories, between population and societal complexity: for instance, that chiefdoms with large populations prove to be the most centralized, stratified, and complex ones.

在我看来，能够表明关于国家形成的一个基本正确的观点的，是一个无庸置疑的事实，即地区人口的多少是预测社会复杂程度的最有力的唯一根据，这个事实远比灌溉与某些国家形成之间的相互关系更能令人信服。我们已经看到，族群有几十个人，部落有几百个人，酋长管辖地有几千人到几万人，而国家一般都要超过5万人。除了地区的人口多寡与社会类型^{(族群、部落等)}之间的这种约略的相互关系外，在这些类型的社会内部，在人口与社会复杂程度之间还有一种更细微的倾向，例如，拥有众多人口的酋长管辖地证明是最集中统一、层次最分明和最复杂的社会。

These correlations suggest strongly that regional population size or population density or population pressure has something to do with the formation of complex societies. But the correlations do not tell us precisely how population variables function in a chain of cause and effect whose outcome is a complex society. To trace out that chain, let us now remind ourselves how large dense populations themselves arise. Then we can examine why a large but simple society could not maintain itself. With that as background, we shall finally return to the question of how a simpler society actually becomes more complex as the regional population increases.

这些相互关系有力地表明了，地区的人口多寡或人口密度或人口压力与复杂社会的形成有着某种关系。但这种相互关系并没有明确地告诉我们，人口的各种可变因素在作为复杂社会缘起的因果关系链中是怎样发生作用的。为了勾画出这个因果关系链，让我们现在提醒自己一些密度大的人口是怎样产生的。然后，我们可以研究一下一个大而简单的社会为什么会难以为继。以这一点作为背景，我们最后还将回到一个简单的社会如何随着地区人口的增长而竟然变得比较复杂这个问题上来。

WE HAVE SEEN that large or dense populations arise only under conditions of food production, or at least under exceptionally productive conditions for hunting-gathering. Some productive hunter-gatherer societies reached the organizational level of chiefdoms, but none reached the level of states: all states nourish their citizens by food production. These considerations, along with the just mentioned correlation between regional population size and societal complexity, have led to a protracted chicken-or-egg debate about the causal relations between food production, population variables, and societal complexity. Is it intensive food production that is the cause, triggering population growth and somehow leading to a complex society? Or are large populations and complex societies instead the cause, somehow leading to intensification of food production?

我们已经看到，众多的或稠密的人口只有在粮食生产的条件下，或至少对狩猎采集来说物产特别丰富的条件下才会产生。有些物产丰富的狩猎采集社会已达到了可以组织酋长管辖地的水平，但还没有一个达到国家的水平，因为所有国家都要靠粮食生产来养活它们的国民。这些考虑加上刚才提到的地区人口多寡与社会复杂程度之间的相互关系，导致了关于粮食生产、人口的可变因素和社会复杂程度之间因果关系的究竟先有鸡还是先有蛋的长期争论。集约的粮食生产是否就是因，是它触发了人口的增长并以某种方式导致了复杂的社会？或者，众多的人口和复杂的社会反而是因，从而以某种方式导致了粮食生产的集约化？

Posing the question in that either-or form misses the point. Intensified food production and societal complexity stimulate each other, by autocatalysis. That is, population growth leads to societal complexity, by mechanisms that we shall discuss, while societal complexity in turn leads to intensified food production and thereby to population growth. Complex centralized societies are uniquely capable of organizing public works ^{(including irrigation systems)}, long-distance trade ^{(including the importation of metals to make better agricultural tools)}, and activities of different groups of economic specialists ^{(such as feeding herders with farmers' cereal, and transferring the herders' livestock to farmers for use as plow animals)}. All of these capabilities of centralized societies have fostered intensified food production and hence population growth throughout history.

用非此即彼的方式提出这个问题，是没有抓住要点。集约化的粮食生产和社会的复杂程度通过自我催化而相互促进。就是说，人口的增长通过我们将要讨论的机制使社会变得复杂起来，而社会的复杂又导致集约化的粮食生产，从而导致了人口的增长。只有复杂的中央集权的社会才能组织公共工程^{(包括灌溉系统)}、远距离贸易^{(包括输入金属以制造更好的农具)}和各种经济专门团体的活动^{(如用农民的粮食养活牧人，又把牧人的牲口提供给农民作耕畜之用)}。中央集权社会的所有这些功能，促进了集约化的粮食生产，从而也促进了整个历史上的人口增长。

In addition, food production contributes in at least three ways to specific features of complex societies. First, it involves seasonally pulsed inputs of labor. When the harvest has been stored, 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.

此外，粮食生产至少在3个方面帮助复杂的社会形成了鲜明的特点。首先，它随季节变化定期地投入劳动力。收成贮藏好之后，中央集权的行政机构就可以利用农民的劳动力来兴建宣扬国威的公共工程^{(如埃及的金字塔)}，或兴建可以养活更多人口的公共工程^{(如波利尼西亚群岛中夏威夷的灌溉系统或鱼塘)}，或从事扩大政治实体的征服战争。

Second, food production may be organized so as to generate stored food surpluses, which permit economic specialization and social stratification. The surpluses can be used to feed all tiers of a complex society: the chiefs, bureaucrats, and other members of the elite; the scribes, craftspeople, and other non-food-producing specialists; and the farmers themselves, during times that they are drafted to construct public works.

其次，组织粮食生产以产生余粮储备，从而使经济专门化和社会层次化成为可能。剩余粮食可以用来养活复杂社会的各个阶层的人：酋长、官员和上层阶级的其他成员；抄写员、手艺人和其他非粮食生产的专门人员；以及被征去修建公共工程时的农民本身。

Finally, food production permits or requires people to adopt sedentary living, which is a prerequisite for accumulating substantial possessions, developing elaborate technology and crafts, and constructing public works. The importance of fixed residence to a complex society explains why missionaries and governments, whenever they make first contact with previously uncontacted nomadic tribes or bands in New Guinea or the Amazon, universally have two immediate goals. One goal, of course, is the obvious one of “pacifying” the nomads: that is, dissuading them from killing missionaries, bureaucrats, or each other. The other goal is to induce the nomads to settle in villages, so that the missionaries and bureaucrats can find the nomads, bring them services such as medical care and schools, and proselytize and control them.

最后，粮食生产促使人们或要求人们采取定居的生活方式，这种生活方式是积累足够的财产、发展复杂技术和精巧手艺以及兴建公共工程的一个先决条件。固定住所对复杂社会的这种重要性说明了，为什么传教士和政府在初次接触新几内亚和亚马孙河地区以前从未与外界接触过的游牧部落或族群时，都普遍抱有两个直接的目的。一个目的当然就是“安抚”这些游牧部落的显而易见的目的：即说服他们不要杀害传教士和官员，也不要自相残杀。另一个目的就是劝诱这些游牧部落在村庄里定居下来，这样传教士和官员就能找到他们，给他们带来医疗保健和学校教育之类的服务，并使他们改变宗教信仰从而控制他们。

THUS, FOOD PRODUCTION, which increases population size, also acts in many ways to make features of complex societies possible. But that doesn't prove that food production and large populations make complex societies inevitable. How can we account for the empirical observation that band or tribal organization just does not work for societies of hundreds of thousands of people, and that all existing large societies have complex centralized organization? We can cite at least four obvious reasons.

因此，粮食生产不但使人口增加，而且还在许多方面发生了作用，使复杂社会能够形成自己的一些特点。但这并不能证明粮食生产和众多人口使复杂社会的出现成为必然之事。根据实际观察，族群或部落组织对有几十万人的社会是不适用的，而且现存的大型社会都有复杂的中央集权组织。对于这种观察结果，我们怎样来予以说明呢？我们至少可以举出4个显而易见的原因。

One reason is the problem of conflict between unrelated strangers. That problem grows astronomically as the number of people making up the society increases. Relationships within a band of 20 people involve only 190 two-person interactions ^{(20 people times 19 divided by 2)}, but a band of 2,000 would have 1,999,000 dyads. Each of those dyads represents a potential time bomb that could explode in a murderous argument. Each murder in band and tribal societies usually leads to an attempted revenge killing, starting one more unending cycle of murder and countermurder that destabilizes the society.

一个原因是没有亲属关系的陌生人之间的冲突问题。随着组成社会的人口的增加，这种问题多得无法计数。一个由20人组成的族群内部的两人之间的互动关系只有190种^{(20人×19÷2)}，而一个由2000人组成的族群可能有199.9万个两人组合。每一个这样的两人组合就是一个潜在的定时炸弹，说不定在哪一次杀气腾腾的争吵中就会爆炸。族群社会和部落社会的每一次谋杀通常都要引起一宗蓄意报仇的杀人事件，从而开始了又一轮杀人和报仇行为，这样周而复始，永无止境，使社会稳定遭到了破坏。

In a band, where everyone is closely related to everyone else, people related simultaneously to both quarreling parties step in to mediate quarrels. In a tribe, where many people are still close relatives and everyone at least knows everybody else by name, mutual relatives and mutual friends mediate the quarrel. But once the threshold of “several hundred,” below which everyone can know everyone else, has been crossed, increasing numbers of dyads become pairs of unrelated strangers. When strangers fight, few people present will be friends or relatives of both combatants, with self-interest in stopping the fight. Instead, many onlookers will be friends or relatives of only one combatant and will side with that person, escalating the two-person fight into a general brawl. Hence a large society that continues to leave conflict resolution to all of its members is guaranteed to blow up. That factor alone would explain why societies of thousands can exist only if they develop centralized authority to monopolize force and resolve conflicts.

在族群中，每一个人同其他每一个人都有密切的亲属关系，与争吵双方同时都有亲属关系的人出面调解争端。在部落中，许多人仍然是关系密切的亲属，每个人至少能够叫出其他每个人的名字，在发生争吵时由双方的亲友来调解。“几百人”是个界限，在这个界限内每个人能够认识另外每个人，一旦超过这个界限，越来越多的两人组合就成了一对对没有亲属关系的陌生人了。当陌生人打架时，在场的人很少会是打架双方的朋友或亲属，没有什么私利要他们去制止打架。相反，如果许多旁观者是打架一方的朋友或亲属，他们就会站在他的一边，这样，本来是两个人的打架结果就逐步升级为一场乱哄哄的群殴。因此，一个继续把冲突交给全体成员去解决的大型社会必然会分崩离析。仅仅这一个因素就可以说明为什么几千人的社会只有在形成完全控制武力和解决矛盾冲突的中央集权的行政管理机构时才能存在。

A second reason is the growing impossibility of communal decision making with increasing population size. Decision making by the entire adult population is still possible in New Guinea villages small enough that news and information quickly spread to everyone, that everyone can hear everyone else in a meeting of the whole village, and that everyone who wants to speak at the meeting has the opportunity to do so. But all those prerequisites for communal decision making become unattainable in much larger communities. Even now, in these days of microphones and loudspeakers, we all know that a group meeting is no way to resolve issues for a group of thousands of people. Hence a large society must be structured and centralized if it is to reach decisions effectively.

第二个原因是，随着人口的增加，共同决策越来越难以做到。由全体成年人来决策，在新几内亚的一些村庄里仍然是可能的，但这些村庄都很小，消息和通知可以迅速传达到每一个人，每一个人在全村大会上可以听到其他每一个人的意见，每一个人也都有在会上发表意见的机会。但共同决策的所有这些先决条件，在大得多的社会里已经无法得到了。即使在如今拥有麦克风和扬声器的时代，我们也全都知道，一次小组会决不能解决一个有几千人的群体的问题。因此，一个大型社会如要有效地作出决定，就必须加以组织并使之置于中央集权的控制之下。

A third reason involves economic considerations. Any society requires means to transfer goods between its members. One individual may happen to acquire more of some essential commodity on one day and less on another. Because individuals have different talents, one individual consistently tends to wind up with an excess of some essentials and a deficit of others. In small societies with few pairs of members, the resulting necessary transfers of goods can be arranged directly between pairs of individuals or families, by reciprocal exchanges. But the same mathematics that makes direct pairwise conflict resolution inefficient in large societies makes direct pairwise economic transfers also inefficient. Large societies can function economically only if they have a redistributive economy in addition to a reciprocal economy. Goods in excess of an individual's needs must be transferred from the individual to a centralized authority, which then redistributes the goods to individuals with deficits.

第三个原因是经济方面的考虑。任何社会都需要在其成员之间转移财货的手段。一个人可能在某一天碰巧获得了较多的某种基本商品，而在另一天则获得较少。人的才智有不同，一个人通常总是对所拥有的某些生活必需品感到过多，而对另一些生活必需品又常嫌不足。在只有很少几对成员的小型社会中，由此而产生的必要的财货转移，可以通过对等交换直接安排在成对个人或家庭之间进行。在大型社会里使直接的成对冲突的解决缺乏效率的那种数学计算，同样也会使直接的成对经济转移缺乏效率。大型社会只有在除了有对等经济还有再分配经济的情况下才能在经济上发生作用。超过个人需要的财货必须从这个人转移到一个中央集权的行政管理机构，然后再由这个机构再分配给财货不足的人。

A final consideration mandating complex organization for large societies has to do with population densities. Large societies of food producers have not only more members but also higher population densities than do small bands of hunter-gatherers. Each band of a few dozen hunters occupies a large territory, within which they can acquire most of the resources essential to them. They can obtain their remaining necessities by trading with neighboring bands during intervals between band warfare. As population density increases, the territory of that band-sized population of a few dozen would shrink to a small area, with more and more of life's necessities having to be obtained outside the area. For instance, one couldn't just divide Holland's 16,000 square miles and 16,000,000 people into 800,000 individual territories, each encompassing 13 acres and serving as home to an autonomous band of 20 people who remained self-sufficient confined within their 13 acres, occasionally taking advantage of a temporary truce to come to the borders of their tiny territory in order to exchange some trade items and brides with the next band. Such spatial realities require that densely populated regions support large and complexly organized societies.

使大型社会必须有复杂组织的最后一个原因与人口的密度有关。粮食生产者的大型社会比狩猎采集者的小族群不但成员多，而且人口密度也大。每一个由几十个猎人组成的族群占据着很大一片地区，在这个地区内，他们可以获得对他们来说必不可少的大部分资源。他们可以在族群战争的间歇通过与邻近族群的交换来获得其他生活必需品。随着人口密度的增加，属于本来只有几十个人的那片地区可能会变成一个很小的地区，越来越多的生活必需品不得不从这个地区以外的地方获得。例如，我们可以把荷兰的16000平方英里的土地和1600万人划分成80万个单独的地块，每个地块包含13英亩土地并被用作一个由20人组成的独立自主的族群的家园，这些人始终在他们的13英亩土地的范围内过着自给自足的生活，偶尔利用暂时的休战到他们这小小地块的边界去同邻近的族群交换物品和新娘。这种受空间条件限制的现实情况，要求人口稠密的地区去养活大型的组织复杂的社会。

Considerations of conflict resolution, decision making, economics, and space thus converge in requiring large societies to be centralized. But centralization of power inevitably opens the door—for those who hold the power, are privy to information, make the decisions, and redistribute the goods—to exploit the resulting opportunities to reward themselves and their relatives. To anyone familiar with any modern grouping of people, that's obvious. As early societies developed, those acquiring centralized power gradually established themselves as an elite, perhaps originating as one of several formerly equal-ranked village clans that became “more equal” than the others.

对解决冲突、决策、经济因素和空间的这些考虑，于是综合起来要求大型社会实行中央集权，但权力的集中不可避免地为那些掌权的人、私下据有信息的人、作决定的人和对财货进行再分配的人大开方便之门，使他们得以利用由此带来的机会为他们自己和他们的亲属谋取好处。对于任何一个熟悉任何现代人的分类的人来说，这一点是显而易见的。随着早期社会的发展，那些获得集中权力的人逐步地成了公认的上层人物，也许他们本来就是属于先前的几个地位平等的乡村氏族之一，只是这些氏族比其他氏族“更平等”罢了。

THOSE ARE THE reasons why large societies cannot function with band organization and instead are complex kleptocracies. But we are still left with the question of how small, simple societies actually evolve or amalgamate into large, complex ones. Amalgamation, centralized conflict resolution, decision making, economic redistribution, and kleptocratic religion don't just develop automatically through a Rousseauesque social contract. What drives the amalgamation?

上面说的就是为什么大型社会不能以族群组织来运作，而只能靠盗贼统治来发生作用的原因。但我们还有一个问题没有解决，这就是小型的简单社会实际上是如何演化成或合并成大型的复杂社会的。合并、冲突的集中解决、决策、经济再分配和盗贼统治者的宗教，并不是通过某种卢梭式的社会契约而自动形成的。是什么推动这种合并的呢？

In part, the answer depends upon evolutionary reasoning. I said at the outset of this chapter that societies classified in the same category are not all identical to each other, because humans and human groups are infinitely diverse. For example, among bands and tribes, the big-men of some are inevitably more charismatic, powerful, and skilled in reaching decisions than the big-men of others. Among large tribes, those with stronger big-men and hence greater centralization tend to have an advantage over those with less centralization. Tribes that resolve conflicts as poorly as did the Fayu tend to blow apart again into bands, while ill-governed chiefdoms blow apart into smaller chiefdoms or tribes. Societies with effective conflict resolution, sound decision making, and harmonious economic redistribution can develop better technology, concentrate their military power, seize larger and more productive territories, and crush autonomous smaller societies one by one.

对这个问题的回答在某种程度上决定于对演化的推理。我在本章开始时说过，归在同一类的社会并不是完全相同的，因为人与人之间、人的群体与群体之间永远存在着差异。例如，某些族群和部落中的大人物比另一些族群和部落中的大人物必然会更具魅力，更有权势，在作决定时更富技巧。在一些大型部落中，具有更强有力的大人物因而拥有更大的权力集中的部落，往往拥有对权力不那么集中的部落的某种优势。像法尤族那样拙劣地解决冲突的部落，往往又分裂为族群，而管理不善的酋长管辖地则分裂成更小的酋长管辖地或部落。能有效地解决冲突、作出正确的决定和实行和谐的经济再分配的社会，能够发展更好的技术，集中自己的军事力量，夺取更大的物产更丰富的地盘，逐一地打垮独立自主的较小的社会。

Thus, competition between societies at one level of complexity tends to lead to societies on the next level of complexity if conditions permit. Tribes conquer or combine with tribes to reach the size of chiefdoms, which conquer or combine with other chiefdoms to reach the size of states, which conquer or combine with other states to become empires. More generally, large units potentially enjoy an advantage over individual small units if—and that's a big “if”—the large units can solve the problems that come with their larger size, such as perennial threats from upstart claimants to leadership, commoner resentment of kleptocracy, and increased problems associated with economic integration.

因此，如果条件许可，复杂程度处在同一水平的社会之间的竞争，往往导致了复杂程度更高的社会。部落之间进行征服或兼并以达到了酋长管辖地的规模，酋长管辖地之间进行征服或兼并以达到了国家的规模，国家之间进行征服或兼并以形成帝国。更一般地说，大的单位可能拥有对各个小的单位的某种优势，如果——这是一个大大的“如果”——这些大单位能够解决因规模变大而带来的问题，如来自觊觎领导地位的狂妄之徒的无时不在的威胁、平民对盗贼统治的忿恨，以及增多了的与经济一体化联系在一起的问题。

The amalgamation of smaller units into larger ones has often been documented historically or archaeologically. Contrary to Rousseau, such amalgamations never occur by a process of unthreatened little societies freely deciding to merge, in order to promote the happiness of their citizens. Leaders of little societies, as of big ones, are jealous of their independence and prerogatives. Amalgamation occurs instead in either of two ways: by merger under the threat of external force, or by actual conquest. Innumerable examples are available to illustrate each mode of amalgamation.

把小单位合并成大单位，这无论在历史上或是考古上都是有案可查的。同卢梭的看法相反，这种合并决不是在一些没有受到威胁的小型社会为了促进其公民的幸福而自由决定合并这一过程中发生的。小型社会的领袖和大型社会的领袖一样，珍惜自己的独立和特权。合并的发生不外乎下面的两种方式之一：在外力的威胁下合并，或通过实际的征服。有无数的事例可以用来说明每一种合并方式。

Merger under the threat of external force is well illustrated by the formation of the Cherokee Indian confederation in the U.S. Southeast. The Cherokees were originally divided into 30 or 40 independent chiefdoms, each consisting of a village of about 400 people. Increasing white settlement led to conflicts between Cherokees and whites. When individual Cherokees robbed or assaulted white settlers and traders, the whites were unable to discriminate among the different Cherokee chiefdoms and retaliated indiscriminately against any Cherokees, either by military action or by cutting off trade. In response, the Cherokee chiefdoms gradually found themselves compelled to join into a single confederacy in the course of the 18th century. Initially, the larger chiefdoms in 1730 chose an overall leader, a chief named Moytoy, who was succeeded in 1741 by his son. The first task of these leaders was to punish individual Cherokees who attacked whites, and to deal with the white government. Around 1758 the Cherokees regularized their decision making with an annual council modeled on previous village councils and meeting at one village ^(Echota), which thereby became a de facto “capital.” Eventually, the Cherokees became literate ^{(as we saw in Chapter 12)} and adopted a written constitution.

在外力威胁下实现合并的很好的例子，是美国东南部切罗基族印第安同盟的组成。切罗基族印第安人原来分为30个或40个独立的酋长管辖地，每一个酋长管辖地就是一个大约有400人的村庄。日益扩大的白人殖民地的开拓，导致了切罗基人与白人之间的冲突。当个别的切罗基人抢劫或袭击白人移民或商人时，白人无法区别不同的切罗基酋长管辖地，而是不分青红皂白地对任何切罗基人进行报复，或是对他们采取军事行动，或是断绝与他们的贸易往来。作为对策，各个切罗基酋长管辖地在18世纪逐步发现它们不得不加入一个单一的同盟。起先，较大的酋长管辖地于1730年选出了一个统领全局的领袖，一个名叫莫伊托伊的酋长，1741年由他的儿子继任。这些领袖的首要任务是惩罚攻击白人的个别切罗基人，并与白人政府打交道。1758年左右，这些切罗基人把他们的决策规范化，仿照以前的村社会议，每年在一个村庄^(埃科塔)召开一次会议，这个村庄因此就成了一个事实上的“首都”。最后，这些切罗基人都成了有文化的人^{(就像我们在第十二章所看到的那样)}，并通过了一部成文宪法。

The Cherokee confederacy was thus formed not by conquest but by the amalgamation of previously jealous smaller entities, which merged only when threatened with destruction by powerful external forces. In much the same way, in an example of state formation described in every American history textbook, the white American colonies themselves, one of which ^(Georgia) had precipitated the formation of the Cherokee state, were impelled to form a nation of their own when threatened with the powerful external force of the British monarchy. The American colonies were initially as jealous of their autonomy as the Cherokee chiefdoms, and their first attempt at amalgamation under the Articles of Confederation ⁽¹⁷⁸¹⁾ proved unworkable because it reserved too much autonomy to the ex-colonies. Only further threats, notably Shays's Rebellion of 1786 and the unsolved burden of war debt, overcame the ex-colonies' extreme reluctance to sacrifice autonomy and pushed them into adopting our current strong federal constitution in 1787. The 19th-century unification of Germany's jealous principalities proved equally difficult. Three early attempts ^{(the Frankfurt Parliament of 1848, the restored German Confederation of 1850, and the North German Confederation of 1866)} failed before the external threat of France's declaration of war in 1870 finally led to the princelets' surrendering much of their power to a central imperial German government in 1871.

切罗基族印第安同盟就这样建立起来了，但不是靠征服，而是靠把以前的一些小心提防的较小实体合并起来，而这种合并只有在这些实体有被强大的外力消灭的危险时才可能发生。同样，关于国家的形成，每一本美国历史教科书都介绍过一个例子，谈到美洲白人殖民地中有一个殖民地^(佐治亚)曾经促成切罗基国家的建立，而这些殖民地本身其实也是在受到强大的外力不列颠君主国的威胁时才被迫建立自己的国家的。美洲各殖民地在开始时也同切罗基的各酋长管辖地一样，小心翼翼地守护着自己的自治权，它们根据《邦联条例》^(1781年)进行的第一次合并尝试，证明是不切实际的，因为它为前殖民地保留了太多的自治权。只是在出现了一些进一步的威胁，著名的有1786年的谢斯起义^[4]和未解决的战争债负担问题，才克服了前殖民地极不愿意牺牲自治的态度，并促使它们通过了我们现行高效能的1787年联邦宪法。19世纪德国的那些小心提防的各邦的统一，证明是同样困难的。在法国于1870年宣战这个外部威胁最后导致1871年小诸侯们向德意志帝国中央政府交出了他们的很大一部分权力之前，早先的3次统一尝试^{(1848年的法兰克福议会、1850年恢复后的德意志联邦和1866年的北德意志联邦)}都失败了。

The other mode of formation of complex societies, besides merger under threat of external force, is merger by conquest. A well-documented example is the origin of the Zulu state, in southeastern Africa. When first observed by white settlers, the Zulus were divided into dozens of little chiefdoms. During the late 1700s, as population pressure rose, fighting between the chiefdoms became increasingly intense. Among all those chiefdoms, the ubiquitous problem of devising centralized power structures was solved most successfully by a chief called Dingiswayo, who gained ascendancy of the Mtetwa chiefdom by killing a rival around 1807. Dingiswayo developed a superior centralized military organization by drafting young men from all villages and grouping them into regiments by age rather than by their village. He also developed superior centralized political organization by abstaining from slaughter as he conquered other chiefdoms, leaving the conquered chief's family intact, and limiting himself to replacing the conquered chief himself with a relative willing to cooperate with Dingiswayo. He developed superior centralized conflict resolution by expanding the adjudication of quarrels. In that way Dingiswayo was able to conquer and begin the integration of 30 other Zulu chiefdoms. His successors strengthened the resulting embryonic Zulu state by expanding its judicial system, policing, and ceremonies.

除了在外力威胁下实现合并外，复杂社会形成的另一种方式是通过征服而实现的。一个得到文件充分证明的例子，是非洲东南部祖鲁国的起源。在白人移民第一次看到祖鲁人时，祖鲁人分为几十个小型的酋长管辖地。在1700年代晚些时候，随着人口压力的增加，各酋长管辖地之间的战争变得日益剧烈起来。在所有这些酋长管辖地中，在集中统一的权力结构的设计中普遍存在的问题，被一个名叫丁吉斯韦约的酋长十分成功地解决了。1807年左右，他杀死了一个对手，从而获得了姆特特瓦酋长管辖地的统治地位。丁吉斯韦约从各个村庄挑选了一些年轻人，按照年龄而不是按照他们的村庄把他们组成团队，就这样建立了一种优秀的集中统一的军事组织。他还发展了出色的中央集权的政治组织，他在征服其他酋长管辖地时禁止杀戮，对被打败的酋长的家族秋毫无犯，只是用这个酋长的一个愿意与丁吉斯韦约合作的亲属来接替酋长的职位。他扩大了对争吵的审理范围，提出了较好的集中解决冲突的办法。这样，丁吉斯韦约就能够征服并开始把其余30个祖鲁族酋长管辖地合并起来。他的继承人扩大司法系统，加强监督和发展礼仪，结果使这个萌芽中的国家得到了加强。

This Zulu example of a state formed by conquest can be multiplied almost indefinitely. Native states whose formation from chiefdoms happened to be witnessed by Europeans in the 18th and 19th centuries include the Polynesian Hawaiian state, the Polynesian Tahitian state, the Merina state of Madagascar, Lesotho and Swazi and other southern African states besides that of the Zulus, the Ashanti state of West Africa, and the Ankole and Buganda states of Uganda. The Aztec and Inca Empires were formed by 15th-century conquests, before Europeans arrived, but we know much about their formation from Indian oral histories transcribed by early Spanish settlers. The formation of the Roman state and the expansion of the Macedonian Empire under Alexander were described in detail by contemporary classical authors.

通过征服而形成国家的这个祖鲁族的例子几乎多得不胜枚举。18世纪和19世纪的一些欧洲人碰巧亲眼目睹了由酋长管辖地形成土邦的情况，这些土邦包括波利尼西亚群岛中的夏威夷国、波利尼西亚群岛中的塔希提国、马达加斯加岛的梅里纳国、非洲南部祖鲁国以外的莱索托和斯瓦齐以及其他国家、西非的阿散蒂国以及乌干达的安科莱国和布干达国。阿兹特克帝国和印加帝国是在15世纪通过征服而建立的，那时欧洲人还没有到来，但对它们形成的情况，我们从早期西班牙移民翻译过来的印第安人口述历史中知道了不少。关于罗马帝国的形成和亚历山大统治下的马其顿帝国的扩张，同时代的古典作家有详细的描述。

All these examples illustrate that wars, or threats of war, have played a key role in most, if not all, amalgamations of societies. But wars, even between mere bands, have been a constant fact of human history. Why is it, then, that they evidently began causing amalgamations of societies only within the past 13,000 years? We had already concluded that the formation of complex societies is somehow linked to population pressure, so we should now seek a link between population pressure and the outcome of war. Why should wars tend to cause amalgamations of societies when populations are dense but not when they are sparse? The answer is that the fate of defeated peoples depends on population density, with three possible outcomes:

所有这些例子都表明，战争或战争威胁在大多数^{(即使不是全部)}社会合并中起了关键的作用。但是战争，甚至仅仅是族群间的战争，一直是人类社会的一个恒久不变的事实。那么，为什么只是在过去的13000年中战争才明显地开始造成社会的合并？我们业已断定，复杂社会的形成以某种方式与人口的压力联系在一起，因此我们现在应该寻找一下人口压力与战争后果之间的某种联系。为什么战争总是在人口稠密而不是在人口稀少的时候造成社会的合并呢？答案是，战败民族的命运取决于人口的密度，这有3种可能的后果：

Where population densities are very low, as is usual in regions occupied by hunter-gatherer bands, survivors of a defeated group need only move farther away from their enemies. That tends to be the result of wars between nomadic bands in New Guinea and the Amazon.

凡是人口密度很低的地方，就像在狩猎采集族群占据的地区所常见的那样，战败群体的幸存者只要离开他们的敌人远一点就行了。新几内亚和亚马孙河地区游牧部族之间战争的结果往往就是这样。

Where population densities are moderate, as in regions occupied by food-producing tribes, no large vacant areas remain to which survivors of a defeated band can flee. But tribal societies without intensive food production have no employment for slaves and do not produce large enough food surpluses to be able to yield much tribute. Hence 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.

凡是人口密度中等的地方，就像粮食生产部落占据的地区那样，没有大片空旷的地方可以让战败族群的幸存者逃避。但是，没有集约型粮食生产的部落社会不使用奴隶，也不能生产出可以作为很大一部分贡品的足够的剩余粮食。因此，战败部落的幸存者对胜利者来说毫无用途，除非娶他们的女人为妻。战败的男人都被杀死了，他们的地盘也可能为胜利者所占有。

Where population densities are high, as in regions occupied by states or chiefdoms, the defeated still have nowhere to flee, but the victors now have two options for exploiting them while leaving them alive. Because chiefdoms and state societies have economic specialization, the defeated can be used as slaves, as commonly happened in biblical times. Alternatively, because many such societies have intensive food production systems capable of yielding large surpluses, the victors can leave the defeated in place but deprive them of political autonomy, make them pay regular tribute in food or goods, and amalgamate their society into the victorious state or chiefdom. This has been the usual outcome of battles associated with the founding of states or empires throughout recorded history. For example, the Spanish conquistadores wished to exact tribute from Mexico's defeated native populations, so they were very interested in the Aztec Empire's tribute lists. It turned out that the tribute received by the Aztecs each year from subject peoples had included 7,000 tons of corn, 4,000 tons of beans, 4,000 tons of grain amaranth, 2,000,000 cotton cloaks, and huge quantities of cacao beans, war costumes, shields, feather headdresses, and amber.

凡是人口密度高的地方，就像国家或酋长管辖地所占有地区那样，被打败的人仍然无处可逃，但胜利者不杀死他们而有了利用他们的两种选择。由于酋长管辖地社会和国家社会已出现了经济专业化，被打败的人可以当奴隶来使用，就像在《圣经》时代通常发生的那样。或者，由于许多这样的社会已经有了能够生产大量剩余粮食的集约型粮食生产系统，胜利者可以让战败者仍然从事原来的劳作，只是剥夺了他们的政治自主权，要他们定期地用粮食或货物来纳贡，并把他们的社会合并入获胜的国家或酋长管辖地。在整个有文字记载的历史上，与国家或帝国的建立联系在一起的一些战役的结果通常就是这样。例如，西班牙征服者想要从被打败的墨西哥土著那里勒索贡物，所以他们对阿兹特克帝国的贡单很感兴趣。原来阿兹特克人每年向臣服他们的人收取的贡物包括7000吨玉米、4000吨豆类、4000吨苋菜籽、200万件棉斗篷、大量可可豆、军服、盾牌、羽毛头饰和琥珀。

Thus, food production, and competition and diffusion between societies, led as ultimate causes, via chains of causation that differed in detail but that all involved large dense populations and sedentary living, to the proximate agents of conquest: germs, writing, technology, and centralized political organization. Because those ultimate causes developed differently on different continents, so did those agents of conquest. Hence those agents tended to arise in association with each other, but the association was not strict: for example, an empire arose without writing among the Incas, and writing with few epidemic diseases among the Aztecs. Dingiswayo's Zulus illustrate that each of those agents contributed somewhat independently to history's pattern. Among the dozens of Zulu chiefdoms, the Mtetwa chiefdom enjoyed no advantage whatsoever of technology, writing, or germs over the other chiefdoms, which it nevertheless succeeded in defeating. Its advantage lay solely in the spheres of government and ideology. The resulting Zulu state was thereby enabled to conquer a fraction of a continent for nearly a century.

因此，粮食生产及社会之间的竞争与混合，产生了征服的直接原动力：病菌、文字、技术和中央集权的政治组织。这些都是终极原因，是通过因果关系链而表现出来的，虽然这些因果关系在细节上有所不同，但全都与稠密的庞大人口和定居的生活方式有关。由于这些终极原因在不同的大陆上有不同的发展，征服的这些原动力在不同的大陆上也有不同的发展。因此，这些原动力往往是相互联系着一起出现的，不过这种联系并不是绝对的：例如，在印加人中出现了一个没有文字的帝国，而在阿兹特克人中则出现了一个有文字但很少有流行病的帝国。丁吉斯韦约的祖鲁人则证明了，每一个这样的原动力都多少独立地为历史模式作出了贡献。在几十个祖鲁族的酋长管辖地中，姆特特瓦酋长管辖地无论在技术、文字或病菌方面都不具有对其他酋长管辖地的优势，但它还是成功地打败了它们。它的优势仅仅存在于管理和意识形态方面。这就使由此而产生的祖鲁国得以在将近一个世纪的时间里征服了一个大陆的一部分地区。

注释：

¹ 巴罗克风格：在音乐上指多用数字低音和对位法装饰的、追求新奇节奏效果的风格。——译者

² 马拉迪：现为尼日尔南部城市。——译者

³ 马其顿的亚历山大：即亚历山大大帝^{(公元前356—323)}，马其顿国王^{(公元前336—323)}，即位后，先后征服希腊、埃及和波斯，并侵入印度，建立亚历山大帝国。——译者

⁴ 谢斯起义：丹尼尔·谢斯^{(1747—1825)}，美国军官，领导农民起义^{(1786—1787)}，起义被镇压⁽¹⁷⁸⁷⁾，被俘判处死刑，次年获赦免。——译者