History
Anthropologist Elman Service distinguishes two stages of tribal societies: simple societies organised by limited instances of social rank and prestige, and more stratified societies led by chieftains or tribal kings (chiefdoms). Historically, tribal societies represent an intermediate stage between the band society of the Paleolithic stage and the Civilization with centralized, super-regional government based in cities. Stratified tribal societies led by tribal kings thus flourished from the Neolithic stage into the Iron Age, albeit in competition with civilisations and empires beginning in the Bronze Age. An important source of information for tribal societies of the Iron Age is Greco-Roman ethnography, which describes tribal societies surrounding the urban, imperialist civilisation of the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, tribal kingdoms were again established over much of Europe in the wake of the Migration period. By the High Middle Ages, these had again coalesced into super-regional monarchies.
Tribal societies also remained prevalent in much of the New World, excepting Paleolithic or Mesolithic band societies in Oceania and in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. Europeans forced centralized governments onto these societies during Colonialism, but in some instances they have retained or regained partial self-government.
Read more about this topic: Tribal Chief
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)