Civilization Stops at 500 meters

Listened to an interesting lecture by Professor James Scott, Sterling Professor of Political Science and Anthropology at Yale University, entitled “Why Civilisations Can't Climb Hills: a political history of statelessness in Southeast Asia”. Scott argues in reference to "indigenous" hill people of Southeast Asia, but also applicable to similar mountain peoples worldwide, that many of these groups did not grow up in isolation from the mainland culture, but indeed “ran away” to the mountains from the mainland culture. This decision to run away was often made rationally to avoid persecution, taxation, or other burdens from a centralized government. Even to the choice of crops – for example, choosing a tuber crop that could be grown unobtrusively, moved easily, and stored for long periods, lent itself better for those “on the run” from central authority than grains or rice which was easy for authorities to find and confiscate. Oral histories of some of these cultures describing a once-written language lost to another people (in one case “stolen by big brother" (i.e a dominant culture) give colorful testimonial to people who decided to “run to the hills” as a rational choice for a better life.

The title of the lecture comes from Scott's supporting argument that people ran to mountain areas as most states have historically proven unable to physically control those areas. He quoted a previous scholar as stating "civilization stops at 500 meters". Traditional maps showing political influence often are misleading, he says, because influence wanes quickly with difficult terrain. Maps taking in to account altitude and ruggedness would be much different.

Questions that come to mind about this idea - what percentage of upland peoples did in fact originate from mainland areas, or did mainland peoples move to the uplands and become assimilated into existing cultures? There is probably no way to determine answers to those questions, except perhaps through genetic testing. What does the future hold for such groups? Depending on their location (for example, Kurds in Iraq) perhaps they suffer more or less interaction with the central authorities in the present due to improved technology which allow easier access to rugged areas?

This lecture can be found here as a podcast here presented by the University Channel hosted by Princeton University.