Ancient Greece and Rome are considered the cradles of democracy. But democratic structures also developed in other parts of the world thousands of years ago. This is suggested by a study that examined a wide range of archaeological evidence from Europe, America and Asia for clues to the social form. Architectural features as well as traditions from art and culture served as clues. Accordingly, societies outside of Europe also developed participatory systems of rule early on.
The word “democracy” comes from Greek and means “rule of the people”. Around 2,500 years ago, a political system developed in ancient Greece in which male citizens determined politics in the popular assembly. A little later, the Roman Republic also made it possible for male citizens to have political participation. “Western social science typically assumes that the core features of democratic governance – limiting concentrated power and engaging citizens – were unique to the Mediterranean region at this time,” explains a team led by Gary Feinman of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. “However, this thesis has hardly been systematically tested so far.”
Urban development as an indication
To find out to what extent democratic systems also existed in other cultures, Feinman and his team evaluated a wide range of evidence from 40 societies in 31 locations in Europe, America and Asia. Since written records are missing in many cases, the researchers relied on alternative indicators that also allow conclusions to be drawn about the social structure.
Architecture and urban planning provide evidence, for example: “If you find urban areas with wide open spaces or if you see public buildings that have large spaces where people can come together and exchange information, these societies tend to be more democratic,” explains Feinman. “If you see pyramids with a tiny room at the top, or city maps with all streets leading to the ruler’s residence, these are signs of more autocratic cases.”
Democratic approaches in different parts of the world
According to the researchers, cultural practices can also provide information about the type of society. In autocracies, for example, large festivals often take place in honor of the rulers; in more democratic systems, the focus is more on popular topics. “In the Central American city of Teotihuacán, for example, processions and dances took place in large, open squares and were dedicated to the fertility of the land and cosmic cohesion,” the team reports. Based on the various clues, Feinman and his colleagues created an autocracy index on which they located the cultures they examined.
“Both democracies and autocracies were widespread in ancient times,” says co-author David Stasavage, of New York University. “In the results of our analyses, it is therefore not particularly unusual that Athens and Republican Rome are classified as relatively democratic. But parallels are also found among the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and the protohistoric Zuni of North America, the early Mesoamerican highland cities of Teotihuacán and Monte Albán, the Tlaxcaltecs (the enemies of the Aztecs), and the early urban center of Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley in the present day Pakistan.” In some of these centers, collectively governed communities even lasted for many centuries.
Collaboration and co-determination
In addition, Feinman and his colleagues examined which factors favored autocratic or democratic systems. “Neither the population size of a state nor the geographical region correlate closely with the type of governance, which calls into question existing neo-evolutionary models,” the researchers report. The economy, however, had an important influence. If a society was heavily dependent on revenues controlled or monopolized by individual leaders – including mining, long-distance trade, slave labor or spoils of war – it was more likely to be autocratic. If, on the other hand, societies financed themselves primarily through community work and internal taxes, this encouraged participation by many, combined with lower economic inequality.
“Our study highlights the diversity and persistence of collective governance and provides a scalable methodology for future comparative research and reshaping historical narratives,” the researchers write. “The results contradict the widespread assumption that Europe has been the only bastion of democratic governance over the centuries.”
Source: Gary Feinman (Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois, USA) et al., Science Advances, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aec1426