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Social Typology and the Tropical Forest Civilizations 1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Michael D. Coe
Michael D. Coe
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

1. The Classic Khmer and the Classic Maya civilizations had cult centers but not true cities. They both arose in areas which were regionally undifferentiated.

2. Easy transportation and heavy trade were lacking because of the areawide uniformity of crops and the difficult terrain. Consequently, urban centers were not and could not be supported.

3. Both areas did produce a surplus and therefore could support civilized life. The social orders of each were so set up that through religious sanctions this surplus, which included labor, could be utilized for the creation and support of huge cult centers. Such a kind of organization might be considered as unilateral (mechanical) in the Durkheimian sense.

4. In contrast, true cities arose in productive agricultural areas which were regionally specialized, with symbiotic interdependence of a Maussian nature. Trade and trade routes were highly developed so that commodity prices were sufficiently low to enable large groups of persons engaged in commerce to live together and yet make a profit on their activities. Internally specialized civilizations of this sort have been termed organic.

5. It is suggested that among the organic civilizations, the state may have had its origin in the regulation of trade; among the unilateral civilizations, in the compulsion of tribute and corvee labor.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , November 1961 , pp. 65 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1961

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References

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15 I am indebted to Robert M. Adams for calling my attention to the peculiar exception of Samarra. In 836 A.D. the Caliph Mu'tasim began construction of a vast royal city, apparently urban in every sense of the word, moving the capital to this location from Baghdad, 60 miles away. After an occupation of only 45 years, the city was abandoned and the court returned once more to Baghdad. The whole history of Samarra sounds very much like a noble experiment in town planning which could have gone astray because of the poor mercantile possibilities of this site as compared with Baghdad; ex post facto one might say that the Caliph had tried to impose unilateral, mechanical structure on a population of traders and shopkeepers, and failed. The wonder is that he was able to move them in such a manner.

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53 Milton Altschuler, in his article “On the Environmental Limitations of Mayan Cultural Development”, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 14, No. 2, pp. 189–198, has proposed a dichotomy of societies based upon economic and political means of livelihood, following Oppenheimer. The first is based on the division of labor and the exchange of goods, and therefore would correspond to my “organic” category; the second is clearly the same as my “unilateral”. However, Altschuler's assignment of the Classic Maya to the former runs counter to my argument and is certainly not in accordance with the known facts about this admittedly little known society.