Paper 69 Overview: Primitive Human Institutions

Humans transcend their animal ancestors through their ability to appreciate humor, art, and religion, while socially demonstrating superiority as toolmakers, communicators, and institution builders. When humans maintain social groups over time, these aggregations create activity trends that develop into institutions which serve to save labor and enhance group security. These institutions eventually become traditions conserved by taboos and dignified through religion.

Civilized societies take pride in the character, stability, and continuity of their established institutions, which represent the accumulated customs of the past. As humans evolve socially, their institutions develop to serve various needs related to survival, perpetuation, and gratification, creating a complex social mechanism that functions to support and regulate human civilization. Though institutions sometimes overshadow individual personality and initiative, they provide essential structure for human advancement.

Emotionally, humans surpass their animal ancestors through their appreciation of humor, art, and religion, while socially demonstrating superiority as toolmakers, communicators, and institution builders. When human beings maintain social groups over long periods, their activities create trends that eventually become institutions, which both reduce labor requirements and enhance the group's security.

Civilized people take great pride in the character, stability, and continuity of their established institutions. These institutions are merely the accumulated customs of the past that have been preserved by taboos and dignified through religion, eventually metamorphosing from traditions into conventions that guide social behavior.

All human institutions serve some social need from either past or present times, though their overdevelopment can detract from individual worth by overshadowing personality and diminishing initiative. Ideally, humans should control their institutions rather than allowing these creations of advancing civilization to dominate them and limit personal growth and expression.

Human institutions fall into three general classes that are intimately interrelated and minutely interdependent. First are institutions of self-maintenance, which address food hunger and self-preservation through industry, property, and regulatory mechanisms. Second are institutions of self-perpetuation, which respond to sex hunger and maternal instinct through marriage, education, and religion. Third are institutions of self-gratification, which arise from vanity and pride through customs in dress, social usages, and games, though civilization has never evolved distinctive institutions solely for self-gratification.

Primitive industry gradually developed as insurance against the terrors of famine, with early humans learning from animals that stored food during times of plenty. Before the dawn of frugality and primitive industry, the average tribe experienced destitution and suffering, as humans had to compete with the entire animal world for food, with poverty being their natural condition.

The Prince's staff all worked, doing much to elevate physical labor on Urantia, and Adam was a gardener. Labor distinguishes humans from beasts, whose efforts are largely instinctive, and while the necessity for labor is humanity's paramount blessing, there was a long struggle between the lazy devotees of magic and the apostles of work. The first human foresight focused on preserving fire, water, and food, but primitive man was a natural-born gambler who wanted something for nothing, and success from patient practice was often attributed to charms rather than effort.

The early divisions of labor in primitive society were determined first by natural circumstances and then by social conditions, creating an ordered progression of specialization. The first specialization was based on sex, with women becoming routine workers due to their natural love for babies, while men became hunters and fighters with periods of intense work followed by rest.

Further specializations developed based on age and disease, with elderly and disabled individuals assigned to making tools and weapons. Religious differentiation created the medicine men as the first professional class, while smiths became a small but influential group competing with medicine men as magicians. Additional divisions arose from the conqueror-conquered relationship, which began human slavery, and from the inherent physical and mental differences among people, leading to specialized roles such as flint flakers, stone masons, potters, and traders.

Just as marriage by contract followed marriage by capture, trade by barter followed seizure by raids, though a long period of piracy existed between the early practice of silent barter and later organized exchange methods. The first barter was conducted by armed traders who would leave their goods on neutral ground, and women held the first markets since they were the burden bearers while men served as warriors.

A fetish was often used to guard deposits of goods for silent barter, preventing theft as these market places became secure trading zones, later known as "cities of refuge." Modern writing originated in early trade records, and message sending evolved from primitive smoke signals through various methods to modern communication technologies. Commerce, linked with adventure, led to exploration and discovery, ultimately becoming one of the great civilizers through promoting the cross-fertilization of cultures.

Capital represents labor applied as a renunciation of the present in favor of the future, with food hoarding developing self-control and creating the first problems of capital and labor. The early banker was the valorous tribe member who held group treasures on deposit, while the entire clan would defend his hut if attacked, leading to military organizations designed to protect accumulated wealth.

The basic urges that led to capital accumulation included hunger and foresight, love of family, vanity to display possessions, desire for social position, craving for power, fear of ghosts requiring priest fees, sex urge and the desire to buy wives, and various forms of self-gratification. As civilization developed, new incentives for saving emerged, and property became highly valued, with accumulations of wealth becoming badges of social distinction and philanthropy emerging as a way to display status.

Primitive society with its industrial, regulative, religious, and military divisions rose through the instrumentality of fire, animals, slaves, and property. Fire building, by a single leap, forever separated humans from animals, allowing people to remain on the ground at night since animals fear flames, and it encouraged evening social interactions while providing protection against cold, wild beasts, and ghosts.

Fire served as a great civilizer by providing humans their first means of being altruistic without loss, enabling them to share live coals without depriving themselves. The household fire, tended by the mother or eldest daughter, became the first educator, requiring watchfulness and dependability, while fire later opened doors to metalwork and led to the discovery of steam power and modern uses of electricity, fundamentally transforming human civilization.

Initially, the entire animal world was humanity's enemy; humans first ate animals but later learned to domesticate and make them serve human needs. The domestication of animals occurred accidentally as hunters surrounded herds to maintain control over animals they could kill for food, and later discovered that certain species would submit to human presence and reproduce in captivity.

The dog was the first animal to be domesticated, beginning when a particular dog followed a hunter home after a day's hunt. Dogs were initially used for food, hunting, transportation, and companionship, and their keen sense of smell led to the notion they could see spirits, giving rise to dog-fetish cults. The use of watchdogs made it possible for entire clans to sleep at night, offering protection against both material enemies and supposed spiritual threats.

Primitive humans readily enslaved their fellows, with woman being the first slave, a family slave, while pastoral man enslaved woman as his inferior sex partner as men became less dependent on women. Enslavement represented an advancement over the previous practices of massacre and cannibalism, offering captives life instead of death, though under harsh conditions of forced labor.

Slavery served as an indispensable link in human civilization's development, bridging the gap between chaos and indolence to order and civilized activities by compelling backward and lazy peoples to work. This created wealth and leisure for the social advancement of their superiors, giving rise to the beginnings of government through regulatory mechanisms. While oppressive, slavery created an organization of culture and social achievement, though it later attacked society internally as a destructive social malady, eventually becoming obsolete with the advent of mechanical invention.

While primitive society functioned in many ways as a communal system, early humans did not adhere to modern doctrines of communism; their communal arrangements were practical automatic adjustments that prevented pauperism and want. This early communism did not necessarily level people down or exalt mediocrity, but it did discourage industry and ambition, eventually giving way to higher social orders that accommodated human desires for inheritance, religious saving, liberty, and security.

Private ownership brought increased liberty and stability, though it created landless classes and various forms of economic dependency. The right to property is not absolute but purely social in nature, and all government, law, civil rights, social liberties, and peace have developed around the concept of private ownership. While the present social order is not necessarily right, divine, or sacred, mankind would do well to move slowly in making changes, ensuring that social evolution proceeds forward rather than backward.