Primitive Law, Past and Present by Diamond A. S.;

Author:Diamond, A. S.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1474549
Publisher: Routledge

CHAPTER 16

Cattle Keepers – The Third Agricultural Grade, First Stage

We have now pursued our enquiry up to the beginnings of law and it is worth while pausing here to consider what we have found.

We have found that by and large there are parallel developments in all these peoples towards the emergence of law, but in detail great differences everywhere. We note, first, that there are great changes and advances on the roads to law between most peoples of the least developed and the most developed economies in each chapter, and there is great development between most peoples of one chapter and the next, but that there is overlapping. It is plain, for example, that the most backward of the peoples mentioned in the last chapter (namely, those of the Trans-Fly of New Guinea) are on the whole behind the most developed of the preceding chapter (namely the American Indians of the Northern Plains) in respect of the progress in law, while the Polynesian kingdoms, though they possess no cattle, have reached a stage in the development of government and law reminiscent of our Central Codes. It is also plain that peoples of apparently similar economic development in other respects are not always similar in their degree or kind of legal development. In New Guinea the Kapauku, little endowed with goods, are precocious in law. Among the Polynesians, the Samoans, though behind the Tongans and Hawaiians in centralization of government are more advanced in their jural conceptions and administration of justice. There is also a vast difference between the trends of the development towards law of the agricultural peoples of the last chapter and the fishing cultures of the north-west coast of North America. We note also certain obvious resemblances in economic and legal development between some peoples of the same culture area, not shared in other culture areas, and on the other hand great differences between peoples of the same culture area notwithstanding similarities in legal development with peoples of other culture areas.

Nothing of this is surprising. Our criteria of economic development, mainly the means of subsistence, are rough and imperfect. The information is often scanty. Reconstructions of the past cannot always be accurate, and the accounts of observers are in a measure matters of opinion and the extent of the area to which they apply is not always defined. Some advances may be acquired by learning from others, some by independent invention. It is not to be supposed that there is only one solution to the problem how man is to gain control over a particular environment or maintain order in it: and it is plain that peoples without cattle or metals are capable of large progress towards civilization. Above all, it is not to be supposed that economic development wields the sole influence on law, and yet it has plainly appeared that it must wield a great and perhaps the chief influence. Looking at the picture as a whole and in its simplest terms, we can see clearly

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