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From: Bob Hay <>
Subject: [DNA] S21/S28 Split+m223 stuff
Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 11:57:10 +1000


Janet Crawford wrote:

>I suspect the elites had much more freedom to roam around the territories, but
the ordinary folk were the ones quite constrained. At some early point in time
the elites would all have been related to each other to some degree.

>I hadn't thought about traders before, but I would assume they also were
allowed to travel between territories in some fashion, but who knows with what
degree of freedom.

We can only guess at what happened in Deep Time, but modern anthropologists
have recorded many ways in which safe passage could be guaranteed among
tribes and often over very long distances.

Marriage alliances were one such method of course where kinship provided the
visa. Another was fostering: usually the prerogative of the élite, fostering
was still in vogue even as late as Macbeth in northern Scotland. Not
unrelated to fostering was the warrior training together of young men: the
Irish epic of Cuchulainn and Ferdia is a good example.

Another and very powerful method was through co-initiates: men inducted into
varying levels of initiation would be guaranteed safe passage in the tribal
lands of others who went through the same ceremony with them, the higher the
level of initiation, usually the larger the territory open to them. Here, in
Australia for example, "Men of High Degree" to use Elkin's term, could
travel virtually unhindered for thousands of kilometres, from one side of
the continent even to the other. Not unrelated to this was the special role
often granted to craftsmen, sometimes a priestly or other sacred status
perhaps (for ease of recognition) demonstrated by special dress.

Personally, I can well believe our remote ancestors had thought up similar
systems for themselves....


Bob Hay
at home at
www.bobhay.net
H3EQG - S28+ (U152+)
R1b1b2a2g (formerly R1b1c10)






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