Lonecat Nekophrodite
Deity
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- Jan 10, 2019
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Is this a correct or did I miss something when making a mod civilopedia?
'Hierachy' is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another, and each of these are related one way or another. Hierarchy is an important concept in a wide variety of fields, such as architecture, philosophy, design, mathematics, computer science, organizational theory, systems theory, systematic biology, and the social science. In this context, Hierachy here means 'Social Hierachy'. A hierarchy can link entities either directly or indirectly, and either vertically or diagonally. The only direct links in a hierarchy, insofar as they are hierarchical, are to one's immediate superior or to one of one's subordinates, although a system that is largely hierarchical can also incorporate alternative hierarchies. Hierarchical links can extend "vertically" upwards or downwards via multiple links in the same direction, following a path. All parts of the hierarchy that are not linked vertically to one another nevertheless can be "horizontally" linked through a path by traveling up the hierarchy to find a common direct or indirect superior, and then down again. This is akin to two co-workers or colleagues; each reports to a common superior, but they have the same relative amount of authority.
Social Hierachy is as old as humanity itself, or at least evolved along a mankind. It began once as humanity learned to live in larger groups, larger than one's family, for the sake of mutual survival. Originally it seems that early social hierachy of humans were as simple as a wolf's pack, or a lion's family, as each groups consisted of not so many families and everyone knows each other, and when everyone agreed (to various degree) to let someone the society in question deemed 'most appropriate'. That is, when mankind developed agricultures for the first time, and this 'Agriculture' sometimes included livestock pastorals. However 'Grain-growing' agrarian society always yielded more food surplus than pastoral society and thus population explosions so often occured in agrarian societies, and later these were peoples that formed urban centers. When simple village becomes city, so grew complexities to the point that human social hierachy became more like bees, gone are the days that 'everyone must be able to do everything' no matter how good or bad a person can do one specific task, simple chiefdom social hierachy became also more complex, and specialized (that someone has to be excellence at some task without needing to perfect the others and lost the excellency on the primary fields of skills, thus 'caste systems' came to exists. Generally there are 3 classes within the same society; Those who pray (Shamans, Priests, Monks, or any other holymen), Those who fight (Warrior castes that went by various names, simply put), and those who work (Working classes, and sometimes including merchants). Theoretically within the Society, Working classes works to gather resources to feed the entire society, including farmers to produce surplus food (more than domestic comsumptions), and craftsmen to produce needful items each of these men known to do best, and others in the society needs. Warrior caste practices martial arts and weapons skills to use whenever needed to do, and also to keep peace within the society with his skills. Holymen recites prayers of different difficulties every day, and study the truth of natures or deities, for example. In Theory when it comes to war, Warrior Caste is expected to fight on the battlefield, and protects workers at home territories, likewise, Working men would provides needful supplies to feed these warriors, and holymen to pray, and sometimes, to heal. In Truth, it turns out that warrior caste usually added working class men in large numbers to the active combat elements, and holymen would draw some peasantry to work as healers. This however often happens due to neccessity, since Working Classes were always the most numerous, yet as Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes quoted in his famous 'What is the Third Estate?' treatise, 'Never has been in any political order'.
The reasons class system exists was that, before reliable firearms, almost every weapons require years of trainings, while spears (including elongated variants--pikes) were very easy to learn by everyone (the actual reasons spearmen and pikemen were commonly basic infantry of every factions in the era before gunpowder weaponry was due to the advantage of numbers, see also 'Spearmen' ), Other weapons require constant practices to use properly, Swords and Bows were the most obivious examples, and since swords were intentionally made as weapons, swords (as well as some other purpose built weaponry) were ill suited to use as tools of the trade, while bows and axes were used as equally as weapons and tools of the trade and so any average peasantry who works as craftsmen, woodsmen and huntsmen could master since they had to frequently swing axes to work on woods, or use bows in huntings, in short these peoples practices combat skills when working. Swordsmen however, didn't have such opportunity to practice when at work due to the weapons design, thus these peoples needed workers to support them while they spent their years after years practicing and perfecting martial arts of associate weapons. This came to 'mutual agreements' that workmen shall not store weapons beyond what's used as tools, and will provide surplus resources to those warriors, in exchange of protections, that warriors shall not work the land themselves. And members of social hierachy are usually (and conveniently) heredetiary, These were once logical, until the proliferations of firearms in the late 15th Century. However actual social upheavals came about 3 centuries after, in the Industrial Revolutions, which mode of productions, and rise of middle classes made hereditiary caste system irrelevant.
