Ch 1 - In the Beginning

Building New Societies

East Asia's emerging cultures set in place the social structures and hierarchy that dominated future generations. The earliest form of a state structure to exist in East Asia took the form of a tribal state, or "walled-town state."

In each of the small communal societies and villages that emerged throughout East Asia, family clans lived their lives according to well-defined levels of authority and social status. At the top of village society sat the tribal chieftain, a man selected by the group whenever it felt the need for a war leader or someone to settle matters of serious dispute. Clan members and tribes readily flocked to the standard of a victorious chieftain and his success was usually self-perpetuating. Although tribal chieftains were both honored and greatly feared, his leadership existed only so long as the group remained satisfied with his rule. The loss of a battle, undue hardship at the hands of nature, or just plain incompetence meant instant disqualification for a tribal chieftain;  even death.

Beneath the tribal chieftain in both authority and status were the village leaders, senior clan members who guided the daily affairs of the community and administered village production. They kept food production records and decided such matters as what to plant, when to plant, and when to harvest. The majority of peasants, the hunters, herders and farmers, lived below the village leadership. Peasants held the status of freemen, or commoners, in the social order of village life. Slaves lived at the very bottom of tribal society. This basic stratification of village life represented the earliest form of the social class structure that later dominated the lives of East Asians.

The most powerful tribal group in northeast Asia, the Puyo, emerged in the area around Nung-an, Manchuria. Puyo clan chieftains wore imported Chinese silks covered with fox and sable furs, and headgear adorned with gold and silver. The expansive flatlands of the Manchurian Plain along the Sungari River basin became home to the seven tribes of the Malgal, whose reputation for constant warfare made them the most feared of the northern clans.

The I-lou tribe lived in the forested mountains far to the northeast, near the Amur River. They were a tribe of hunters, fishermen, herders, and small-scale farmers who raised millet, barley, and vegetables. I-lou warriors armed with bows made from animal horn and twenty-three inch arrows tipped with poisoned stone arrowheads spent their summers conducting raids against neighboring clans. They earned a fearsome reputation as deadly archers, for any wound from an I-lou arrow was almost instantly fatal.

The simple, agricultural people of the Yemaek tribe lived among the foothills and high plains between the T'ung-chia River and the middle reaches of the Yalu River. Though reluctant to engage in warlike pursuits, when they did fight, Yemaek warriors carried spears as long as three men and fought on foot. The Imdun tribe settled in the flat coastal plain south of Hamhung along the Korea's northeastern seacoast. The Chinbon tribe lived in the fertile mid-peninsula region between the Taedong and Han Rivers. The Chin tribe lived south of the Han River.

The arrival of new metalworking technology along with the knowledge and skills required to make new kinds of tools and weapons marked the beginning of a major transition throughout Asia. The ability to produce metal tools for agriculture and uniformly high quality weapons cheaply and in quantity meant clans could farm the land on a much larger scale, turning whole valleys over to grain production. The trigger for this dramatic change was the sickle, a uniquely designed metal cutting tool with a flat curved metal blade sharpened along its inside edge. Farmers using a sickle discovered they could harvest fields faster by cutting grain in clusters rather than one stalk at a time. This new tool not only gave farmers the ability to harvest crops in less time, it meant they could now harvest more land in the same amount of time. The introduction of the sickle and better metal tools led directly to a significant increase in crop production and dry agriculture soon took on a much greater importance in people's lives.

The advent of property and politics - who leads and who follows - set in place the basic ingredients needed to trigger social conflict. Agriculture became the final ingredient in East Asian history that made open conflict, even true warfare, a reality. The improved capability to plant and harvest meant farmers could now produce a food surplus. The extra food supply allowed clans to support those who did not or could not produce food, namely the artisans and the village aristorcracy. Surplus food also represented wealth, fueling the growth of cultures, covetousness and the drive for power by village leaders. The whole community did not share this increased wealth equally however, a situation that irrevocably widened the gap between the rich and poor;  not just within a single village, but between villages.

Once people became rooted to the land and began accumulating wealth and property, things really began to change. With increased wealth came the status that went with having it and the desire to defend it. Prior to the establishment of semi-permanent and permanent settlements in East Asia, there was no real organization or motivation for large-scale warfare among tribes. Now there was a reason to fight, for there was something of great value to steal and governments to organize the theft.

Nomadic tribes, whether herders or hunter-gatherers, never appreciated settled life and their mobility made them far more dependent on their agricultural neighbors than the other way around. If they needed grain for bread, luxuries such as tea and textiles for their aristocracy, or metals for their weapons, nomadic tribes would generally get them through trading. The tremendous distances between camps and settlements however, meant that only a small amount of such trading actually took place.

Faced with competition for scarce resources, when nomads or predatory tribes found it impossible to trade, or if a settlement refused to trade, they simply took what they wanted. Having already learned to steal from each other, predatory clans cast an envious eye toward the wealth of emerging agricultural centers. They soon began descending onto the fertile plains and valleys to rob agricultural villages of their surplus. No doubt that women and revenge still played a role in these raids, but it was the addition of property that gave the impetus for most of these attacks.

Few of these predatory raids involved full scale battles. Most involved quick attacks and terrorism. For a relatively large and mobile force, cattle-rustling was much easier than cattle-breeding and raiding a rich, weak neighbor was a better way of acquiring resources than working for them.

Paleolithic man used deserts, forests, rivers and caves as defensive barriers against animals and enemies. The development of long range weapons however, such as the throwing spear, the slingstone and the bow and arrow, required a different kind of defense. Among hunter-gatherers, movement afforded the chance to withdraw, to go somewhere else. Agrarian communities did not enjoy the luxury of simply moving out of harm's way, they had to defend themselves where they lived and that meant building artificial barriers. Experience with nature taught that a high wall kept water out of a village in recurring floods. An even steeper wall would certainly keep out an enemy.

To protect and defend their lands and families, not to mention their accumulated wealth, clan chieftains ordered large packed-earth fortifications built on nearby high ground. If another clan attacked the community, able-bodied men armed with sharp weapons and well-provisioned with food waited for the enemy from behind high, thick earthen walls. Women, children and the elderly guarded and tended the village livestock behind these walls. Not much territory could effectively be controlled or defended in this manner, generally only the narrow plains below the fortifications and the population needed to farm the land. Nevertheless, such villages could safely store their food surplus and continue to work the land with some sense of security. This type of fortified village became a model for the earliest organized state structure to exist in East Asia;  the "tribal state," or "walled-town state," named for its protective earthworks.

As populations increased and communities began to flourish, people's lives changed dramatically. Clan chieftains emerged as a kind of kingly authority figure at the head of these small agrarian societies. The ruling upper class, men who actually governed the daily lives of village peasants, originally came from the same clans and once held the same social status as peasants. Once they achieved greater wealth and status, the village leadership evolved into an elite and privileged class, an aristocracy that soon moved to set itself apart from the rest of the village. They began building houses;  ground level mud huts with thatched roofs and wooden framed houses. Living in the walled-town separate from their former village, they supported their rich way of life and the prosperity of their small state by doing what all bureaucrats tend to do;  they imposed taxes on the population (crops, animals, or hand-crafted goods) and commanded peasant services for manual labor.

The very real threat of attack on a village created an incentive to produce better weapons and establish a warrior militia to effectively use them. Tribes or clans without the capacity to produce new tools and weapons could either use their surplus crops to purchase them or, if they could muster sufficient force, take them. Whenever tribal security could not be purchased outright, the most dependable deterrent against attack and the surest guarantee of revenge lay in powerful kin alliances and the skills of well-armed clan horsemen. The heavily armed clan militia did more than strengthen village defenses, it put added power in the hands of the aristocracy, the very men who monopolized and controlled the production and distribution of village wealth.

The evolving social structure of tribal clans and the construction of small "walled-town states" not only brought separate communities into contact with each other, but into competition. All were afflicted to one degree or another with land-hunger and it did not take clan leaders long to realize they could become even richer by controlling more farm and grazing land. The increased power of Asia's new tribal states meant tribal chieftains could amass armies and pay the high costs associated with supporting them. The clan chieftain's well-armed warriors willingly obliged this desire for more land by conquering outlying populations and taking farmland from other clans. This led to the creation of numerous small, clan-ruled provinces throughout East Asia. As clan provinces grew larger and wealthier, distinct societies began to develop around them.