Cannibals and Kings

Marvin Harris

Cannibals and Kings

27min

27min

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If we believe in cultural determinism, then is it possible to predict the evolution of a civilisation using archeological, historical, ethnographical and environmental data. When a society begins to grow, and reaches the limits of the resources of the environment in which it is located, something changes, and this change usually results in catastrophe. Human history is full of such events because similar variables correspond to similar patterns. Thus the bands of hunters and gatherers, the primitive states, the great ancient empires, the feudal world and the Western civilisation of the modern age show us the path that we will probably be called to take: resources are not infinite, the environment cannot sustain us forever, living conditions change, and another cycle is just around the corner.

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Analysis and key concepts

01.

Life in the stone age wasn’t really that bad

02.

The natural relationship between nature and production seals the fate of a population

03.

Nature pushed humans out of the primaeval “garden of Eden”

04.

How an environmental crisis pushed humanity in the direction of agriculture

05.

A crisis of resources led to the invention of war

06.

How ancient states began

07.

The history of the pre-Columbian states of Central America

08.

Why the Aztecs were cannibals

09.

In Europe the availability of food stopped the practice of animal sacrifice and cannibalism

10.

The reasons for the prohibition of meat were ecological, not moral

11.

Large irrigation systems are a freedom trap

12.

Capitalism is the last of the many cycles that have existed throughout human history

13.

Quotes

14.

Take-home message

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Many useful tips to:

  • Get you thinking about the birth of civilisation and where our current “Western civilisation” comes from.
  • Understand how the environment influences the choices human populations make.
  • Appreciate the complexity of human civilisation.
  • Develop a sense of where the next chapter of human evolution might take us.

Marvin Harris was a divisive American anthropologist. He was highly influential in the development of cultural materialism, focusing his analyses at the cross-section between Marxist theories on production and Malthusian theories about demography and its impact on culture and society. Cannibals and Kings is his most famous and most popular work, which earned him both many advocates and opponents alike.

Publishing house:

Vintage Books

Year:

1991

Pages:

368

ISBN:

978-0679728498