(a) How do political organisations of simple societies establish power, authority and legitimacy? (20 marks) (b) Explain the…

(a) Power, authority and legitimacy in simple societies

Following Weber, power is the ability to secure compliance, authority is power accepted as rightful, and legitimacy is the shared belief that makes it so. In simple societies these rest on kinship, ritual and reciprocity rather than a state apparatus.

Bands: leadership is egalitarian and situational, based on age, skill and persuasion. Among the !Kung or Inuit a headman has no coercive power; decisions are by consensus, and leveling mechanisms such as ridiculing a boastful hunter (Lee) and fission of the band curb domination.

Tribes: authority is dispersed. Segmentary lineage systems (Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, African Political Systems, 1940) among the Nuer and Tallensi keep order through balanced opposition, feud and mediation by a leopard-skin chief. Melanesian big-men (Sahlins) earn followers by feasting and gift-exchange, so their authority is achieved and precarious. Age-sets (Maasai) and councils of elders resolve disputes. Indian examples are the Munda-Oraon parha and Santhal manjhi-parganait councils and the Naga village council.

Chiefdoms: authority is ascribed. Hereditary chiefs redistribute goods and claim descent from ancestors or gods, as the Shilluk divine king did (Evans-Pritchard) and Polynesian chiefs with mana; the Khasi syiem rules with clan councils.

Legitimacy comes from tradition, genealogy, ritual, charisma and generosity. Sanctions are mostly informal: gossip, ridicule, ostracism, oaths, ordeals, witchcraft accusation and ritual sanction, backed by feud in stateless societies.

(b) Genetic mechanisms of micro- and macroevolution

Microevolution is change in allele frequencies within a population over a few generations; Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (p² + 2pq + q² = 1) is the null model, and it breaks when any of the following operates.

• Mutation creates new alleles, such as the single-base change giving HbS; it is slow but is the raw material.
• Natural selection changes frequencies by differential reproduction: directional, stabilising or balancing, as when heterozygote advantage maintains HbS in malarial regions.
• Genetic drift, strongest in small populations, as in founder effects and bottlenecks.
• Gene flow (migration) and non-random mating alter frequencies and homogeneity.

Macroevolution is evolution above the species level: the origin of new species, genera and body plans, adaptive radiations and extinctions. Its genetic basis is largely the same microevolutionary processes accumulated over geological time, plus reproductive isolation: allopatric speciation once gene flow stops, sympatric speciation by polyploidy, and chromosomal rearrangements. Human chromosome 2 arose by fusion of two ape chromosomes. Gene duplication produced the globin family; changes in regulatory and Hox genes alter body plans (evo-devo). Punctuated equilibrium (Eldredge and Gould, 1972) explains rapid speciation with long stasis.

(c) European Mesolithic traditions

The Mesolithic (about 11,700 to 6,000 BP in the north, ending earlier where farming arrived) followed Holocene warming, which spread forests of pine, birch, hazel and oak and shifted hunting to red deer, roe deer, aurochs, wild boar, fish and shellfish. Common features are microlithic composite tools, bows, axes and adzes, dugout canoes, domesticated dogs and growing regional diversity.

• Azilian (south-west France, northern Spain): painted pebbles, flat antler harpoons and small round-backed points; Mas d'Azil is the type site.
• Sauveterrian and Tardenoisian (France, Belgium, Italy): geometric microliths, triangles then trapezes, for arrow tips.
• Maglemosian (North Sea plain, southern Scandinavia, Britain): flint microliths and tranchet axes, bone and antler points, wooden paddles; Star Carr in Yorkshire shows red-deer antler headdresses and lakeside camps.
• Ertebølle (southern Scandinavia, about 5400–3900 BCE): coastal fishing, large shell middens, dugouts, cemeteries and late pointed-base pottery adopted by foragers.
• Obanian and Larnian (Scotland, Ireland): shell middens and the Mount Sandel huts.
• Lepenski Vir (Danube Iron Gates): trapezoidal houses and carved boulders of riverine fishers.

Contrast with the Upper Palaeolithic: smaller, more sedentary territories, and many traditions that cannot be treated as one Mesolithic.