A New Definition For Freedom

Or, A New Direction For Democratic Union

As communities began to gather into ethnicities, there was a divide between some communities who organized ritualistically and others who organized structurally from the top down, usually dominated by some kind of king and his coterie that allowed him to remain in power.  But there was another thing that happened primarily against kingships: everyone was not able to accept these kingships and some of them became some of the most violent tribal communities that the Earth has ever experienced. For whatever reason they resisted being incorporated into kingdoms.  Some of the more notable were the Bahktiri in the mideast, the Berbers in North Africa, the Masai in West Africa, and perhaps notably the American Natives, loosely classified as Apache.  Tracing the origins of these groups is sometimes difficult, but the most common denominators thrust upon them are they were nomadic and usually inclined to be herders rather than farmers, therefore more inclined to not be sedentary.  It may not be a very good distinction.

But that they were in conflict  and are often noted for their violence, is certainly established.

The relevance is that they resisted having their freedom ensconced and absorbed into kingdoms.  As I know a little more about the Apache, I will focus on them first.  We have mentioned previously that along with the Navajo they probably separated from their Athabascan roots around 1200-1500 years ago. Whether they migrated together, or separately cannot be well determined.  What we know is the Navajo are much more identifiable as an ethnicity, and they developed a highly developed ritualistic culture that was so ritualistic it eliminated the need for almost all structural leadership hierarchies.  And to a very large extent they focused on herding sheep over agriculture.  Despite the fact that the southwest was never too appealing to Spanish and other western (American) communities, there were thriving agricultural communities in existence when the Navajo arrived.  Whether they seized the lands through conquest or not, the likelihood depends on whether we look back and see all migrations as violent excursions with conquistadorial aims or whether we  view displacements of populations through more benign movements.  Probably there was a combination, and the level of violence probably was relational to the reasons they had migrated.  

The Apache, for instance, didn’t just decide one day to get on horses and ride down to the southwest and displace everyone and become restless outlaws.  There seems to have been several routes which might indicate different departures.  They could have left because the Athabaskan culture no longer fulfilled their needs, or they could have departed due to over-developed populations that were diminishing available resources. They did depart with dogs, probably the larger Alaskan dogs, but they were bred to be smaller, probably again for need.  There is evidence that some first moved into the Rockies, but the most is known about the ones who probably migrated to the plains and hunted buffalo by dogsled.  So currently there seems to be several routes to the area where westerners would come to encounter them.  Coronado reported there were no natives like the Apache tribes  when he first moved into the area, others say he was wrong and didn’t encounter them because there seemed to be a well established trade between the pueblo farming natives and the nomadic buffalo hunters to exchange maize for meat.  To understand the Apache resistance and their evolution into the violent raiders against western culture, we have to step and go to the first westerners that began encroaching the western continent from two directions.  The English colonists from the east and the Spanish northward from Mexico.  As the westerners began to take the land of course conflicts ensued and native cultures were disrupted.  We tend to think this disruption only had consequences upon direct contact.  Of course if you consider for a minute you will recognize the problem here.  All the Indians along the coast didn’t get beaten in battle,  America had a lot of space at that time. But it was not uninhabited space.  Like the entire globe, people had settled across the Americas in most of its environments, and in the same manner as the European continent with which we are most familiar, there was never just one ancestor nor one migration, nor one “ancestor”. The people who are now of European ancestry are the consequence of these differing migrations.  Migrations occur due to lack of resources or displacement.  Displacements occur when migrations occur for whatever reason they occur.  There are three things that happen when these cultures meet.  Some intermingle and become a new ethnicity and new culture, some resist and cease to exist, and some move and consequently displace others.  Well as the westerners were displacing some native cultures they migrated westward and displaced other native cultures. What we know of us as the tribes of the American plains, often lumped together as Sioux, were basically farming communities in the upper midwest and southern Canada west of the Mississippi.  As they were being displaced by tribes migrating from the east they moved into the plains.  Probably it is an error to assume when this migration occurred the Sioux peoples migrated into was prior to the arrival of horses; and they probably adapted to horses and probably the plains Apaches were using horses by now, and much of the nomadic culture we associate with the Sioux, living in tents, and the nomadic lifestyle was adapted by the new migrants from the example of the existing culture, which would have been, to some extent, the plains Apache.  But of course, none of this is exact, and once again it was probably not en masse on a singular occurrence.  

Now what we do know is that as the Spanish were moving into the southwest, and the Sioux were migrating westward, the maize-meat trade was disrupted, and as the Apache tribes, who were never really a unified family of tribes that we would later classify them to be, became resistant to becoming settled and began to become violent in resistance to being completely overtaken by the encroaching communities.  But they didn’t just become violent in defense of their land and culture, but they began to subsist by raiding and attacking and more or less stealing their own survival from others.   And while known primarily through a couple of famous “chiefs” (Cochise & Geronimo), the followers of these leaders did not consider them their chiefs.  Geronimo himself, in his autobiography claims he was never a chief, people followed him only when and if it appealed to them to do so.  In other words, he claims, he had no authority over them.

When we look at these communities from the perspective of a structured community with defined leaders it is difficult to compute the importance the individuals had in the communities and that “chiefs” were not seen as “authorities” over their communities, but followed only when the community saw the purpose of the chiefs to be theirs as well.

I would like to now turn to the Yamnaya.  History tells us they were the most violent culture of all time, marching across Europe (and other places) killing all the men and planting their own seed in the women (via rape).  It is generally assumed they were probably several central groups who formed together and blended into one culture somewhere around the Ukrainian Steppes and the Caucasus, but they are also closely related to groups from eastern Siberia.  The problem with actually determining their exact origin is that their DNA has been linked from Britain, to Scandinavia, Germany and most of central Europe, all the way across northern Asia and even the Pakistani and Northern Indians and then they extended to a lesser extent, perhaps into southeastern Asia. But most seem to believe their origins were probably the southern Siberian region. And yet we know little about them.  They did seem to be adept with bronze, but they never settled into more than wandering herders.  They might have temporarily stopped and farmed, or maybe they just stole other communities' foods.  Their range was so widespread but there is no evidence of a kingdom.   But wait a minute.  That is probably incorrect.  How do we know this is what happened?  New DNA studies have found the Yamnaya DNA.  The Max Planck institute has just released a study that shows when Yamnaya entered into a location, that females did not inherit Yamnaya DNA until 1000 years after it entered the male DNA.  Now this study was done in Switzerland, but it also compares the arrival of the steppe ancestral arrival there at least as early or perhaps slightly earlier than it arrived in Germany and Britain.  So now we have an interesting question.  If the Yamnaya spread their DNA by killing off all the men and mating the women, why this rather long lag in time between the female beginning to have Yamnaya DNA.  Shouldn’t it be the other way around, or at least equal if the women were giving birth to Yamnaya children?  This study was led by Anja Furtwangler and can be found at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15560-x.  

But other studies have also shown that it was mostly males that migrated.  And there have  been found to be other anomalies, the migrations in other parts of Europe show a much higher rate of Yamnaya DNA on the X chromosome (roughly 10 to one).  This is even more lopsided than the Spanish conquistadors in the Americans who brought hardly any women, except governors’ wives and a few other top officials. That could certainly lend to the theory that they were fierce warriors only intent on conquest.  But then they were genetically dying in the steppes and in the Caucasus,  and they had seemed to take their families from Siberia to the Ukraine and Georgian regions because there the DNA had matched among genders.  It is, as the king of Siam said, a puzzlement.  So a few are starting to rethink and suggest perhaps something was happening that contradicts the traditional viciousness of the Yamnaya.  Marija Gimbutu is suggesting peaceful migrations by men who did not actually travel that far and returned home to mate, suggesting a more domestic culture, and probably patronymic.  Others like David Anthony, say no, they had to conquer to spread the language because the victors bring the language.  Well, Anthony may be a good archaeologist, but that is not how English developed.  The victors brought about by the  various conquests of England did bring some linguistic alterations, but English seems to have never evolved drastically,and the last conquest by the french-speaking Normans only brought us around 3000 words. Slightly 30% of English is derived from Latin origins—but not because of the Roman conquest, but were brought by the Church and there is a story of a group of English churchmen traveling to Rome around 1000 AD.  but the Pope and other Italians couldn't understand them because they no longer spoke Latin.  But isolated in England and Ireland the islanders still spoke the old Latin that was no longer spoken in Italy.  I think the story may be somewhat apocryphal as the church did continue to use Latin, but it wouldn’t have been the common parlance of Italy.  But Anthony could also be wrong in another way.  The oldest inhabitants (bar Scotland) were conquered by or died out due to an earlier invasion and the oldest English words we are aware (before the Roman conquest were a mix of the earlier invasion and the Yamnaya.  Also there is far less of the Yamnaya DNA in England than in areas of northern and central Europe, and some of that may have been brought by the Danes.  So this diversion into the Yamnaya is only that.  I am no longer convinced they were the mad conquerors they have been made out to be.  But certainly the concept that their genetics spread by raping all the women can’t be true.

But there were violent groups that refused to ever be subdued. The Berbers in North Africa, the Bakhtiari in the Persian area, the Maasai in western Africa; possibly the people who became the Sikhs, who formed to fight the kings and remain independent peoples.  They were violent for sure, and they are in our historical records. They certainly had war lords they would unite behind when they felt they were being encroached upon, but they fought to remain independent not to conquer, and chiefs had to earn their spurs.  If they were unsuccessful, well their days as leaders were numbered.  The men came together when they felt endangered and they selected the strongest, wisest, both, whatever to lead them.  But they resisted inner structure quite as much as they refused to submit to becoming parts of kingdoms.  In Frank Herbert’s original Dune trilogy, the Fremen are these people who resist the empire, who are nomadic and  fight against the spice culture that is trying to dominate them. When I first encountered that trilogy (and I have to admit it may be one of 10 science fiction type books I've ever read in my life) , we admire their heroic stand against  being conquered. Well I do not suggest we become a militia and fight tyrannies that attempt to take away our identities.  I grew up in the era of Gandhi and MLK.  Their example tells us if you stand up to those trying  to oppress you, if you let them knock you down and then get back up…well that’s my belief. It’s not my belief because I’m a calm and reflective person if allowed to be, but it’s what I will do, if disturbed.  It’s my belief  because history has time and again shown us that if you take power by force you have to rule by force.  There are not a lot  of examples of taking power without firing a shot though. So maybe it cannot be.  I hope it can be.  I want it to be true.  But it can only be true if we’re willing to look those who try to control us straight in the eye and accept their dare.  Step over the line until you’re exhausted.  I’ve been knocked down an awful lot, both by rejection and physically beaten. But I will get back up the moment I can.  I am not heroic.  I am damn sure independent.  The only way to remain independent is to not feel victimized.  If I give in to demands, I lose.  I’ve been beaten physically, but I don’t believe I’ve ever lost a fight.  I’ve never hit back when someone strikes at me, and I would feel I lost the fight if I did.  But that’s the easy part.  It’s much harder to be ignoble if I feel lessened.  You can call me any name in the book and you won’t offend me.  But if I upset someone else I will offend myself.  And anyone who says I can’t do something or I can’t express my opinion, then I am offended.  

Now, today, I am afraid.  I am afraid because there is too much wringing of the hands.  And, today, I am, today, glad.  I am glad when Justin Jones and Justin Pearson continue to challenge their bullies.  I am glad because everyday people are getting knocked down, and getting back up to risk being knocked back down.  And that is again, commonly documented throughout history.

But Martin got up too many times and he was put down forever.    As long as those who want to be in charge can stay in charge, they will prevent the success of people like Martin Luther King.  They always have.  Toussaint L'Ouverture led the people in Haiti to a successful revolution and he, and they, have been stomped on since.  

How do we get up permanently?  How do we do that?

Many people are divided against each other because of the structured authorities.  You can tell them they are free , you can tell them they can vote and it will get better.  But then you tell them they are worthless.  Ron DeSantis tells people the problem is wokeness.  Wokeness to Ron DeSantis apparently means someone has enough knowledge to determine Ron DeSantis may not be right.   But Ron DeSantis is hardly unique in proclaiming a message of division.  A structured society survives only if the individuality of its members are divided at its lowest levels.  If the lowest levels of the community were united in purpose to possess power (i.e. power of the people) those who are at the pinnacle and control the fate of many would become only one of the many.  If power of the people were really allowed to be real then power of the few would cease to be.  The structure can only support itself  if the bottom are prevented from their own power which would be the power of individuals to equally control and not the power of the few. Power is very unstable.  Brothers fought brothers to assume power,sons killed their fathers.  Look only at the myths of the structured communities—including eastern ones, like the Hindi.  The big God becomes the big God after killing the father.  Oedipus assumes power by inheriting his own mother and siring his own children.  That is totally absent in unstructured myth.  But if we turn to Jewish myth we have a conflict.  We have both.  That is because Jewish myth is the combination of the structured kingdom, and the ritualistic canaanites of the north.  After Solomon,the north rebelled from their servitude to the south, but now they had their own structure.  But they remained aware of their own myth of Moses who brought them to freedom from oppression.  In Judah the priesthood assumed power, at first to support the kings, then after their return from captivity, as the power in their own right.  If you care to look at the Pentateuch from this perspective you will be able to make sense of the seeming contradictions.  Moses is mad at Aaron for making the golden calf and condemns him.  But in another passage Moses can’t enter Aaron’s tabernacle.  The escaped slaves have no food and God gives them manna every morning to enable them to survive, but they have gold and rubies and velvet cloth to create the tabernacle.  Not a contradiction, a combination.  When David (or possibly Saul) conquered all of the “tribes” into one, he didn’t ignore the older traditions, but when Solomon assumed power and demanded an opulent lifestyle, additions needed to be made, but he didn’t just throw away the nomadic traditions, he added his own opulence into the tradition and created the Aaronic priestly cult to support him.  He condemned and tore down all places of worship (alters that were not centralized and under his control.  And I suppose probably, in other cultures the myths also combined when they became structuralized.  Rituals become as organized as the hierarchy and religions are empowered to support the hierarchy, whereas in ritually organized communities are organized around the community; and leaders, however they may lead, are inferior to the ritual itself.  If the leader fails to obey the ritual he will not be able to lead.  So the power remains with the community and not the leader.

So to conclude let’s point out the truth of the Great Displacement Theory.  I say truth of the theory because it is evolutionarily true, and it is culturally true, and it is historically and it is exactly how we all are who our genetics tell us we are.  We survive by replacing our ancestors by migrating and intermingling and replacing ourselves for our future.  That is humanity from our pre-sapien ancestors to the present day.  People have not stopped migrating, and they migrate for the same reasons, environmental (in modern terminology, economic) insecurity, to maintain independence from untenable leaders, or because they, themselves, are being displaced.  Humanity is the story of great displacement and it is good, it is positive, it proves that we are all of the same species.  Lions and tigers cannot displace each other for a common advantage, but humans can.  Displacement is necessary, but is also genetically sound, and in our species, genetically profitable.

But the very normal consequence of human species development is being used, once again, to wedge division.  If you tell people it is they, the followers, who are going to be replaced when you, the leaders, feel they might become displaced.  And leaders have constantly been in need to divide in order to have subjects remain conquered.  It is not divide and conquer. First is conquering then dividing to refrain from being conquered.

Notes; In May, I am going to attempt to begin discussing many of the structures of the common institutions that maintain division and ways to reform those structures that might lend themselves toward better independent, or more “power to the people” so to speak.

As always, I welcome debate.