AILSA CHANG, HOST:
If you think ancient democracies were unique to the Greeks and Romans, think again, because in a new study, researchers found evidence of ancient democracies in dozens of areas all around the world, spanning the Americas, Europe and Asia. The findings were published this week in the journal Science Advances. Archaeologist Gary Feinman is the study's lead author. He's the MacArthur curator of Mesoamerican, Central American and East Asian anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago. Welcome.
GARY FEINMAN: Thank you very much, and thank you for having me on.
CHANG: Well, thank you for being here. OK, first, how do you define democracy for the purposes of this study?
FEINMAN: We defined it in terms of two dimensions, the relative concentration of power and the extent to which citizens have a voice in the political process. And it was through those two dimensions we created a spectra from autocratic to democratic organization. So it's not a category. It's a dial or spectrum.
CHANG: Gotcha. Sliding scale. It's like a fluid classification, yes?
FEINMAN: Yes, exactly.
CHANG: OK. Well, in this study, you cited dozens of examples of democratic governing from, like, across the ancient world. Are there two or three key features that we see across the board, even though it is a sliding scale of what you classify as democratic?
FEINMAN: Yes, I think when rulers have their powers checked by other institutions, that's a very key aspect of more democratic practices. And I think another one is when a society has the opportunity for its citizens to get together, exchange information, express their voice. That's another good dimension.
CHANG: OK. And I understand, as you were trying to classify these different societies based on their governing mechanisms, there wasn't always written documentation. So you and your colleagues had to get creative when looking for evidence of ancient democracies, right? What did you rely upon?
FEINMAN: We relied heavily for many of the cases on archaeological evidence and things like the ground plans of ancient cities and the nature of nonresidential and residential buildings. Basically, in terms of ground plan, where both a city has broad access ways and large open spaces for people to aggregate and exchange information, that tends to go along with more democratic practices. And likewise, where there are various kinds of public buildings and those buildings have large spaces where people can hold councils or exchange information, again, that would be more democratic. The alternative would be very small spaces at the tops of old buildings or cities where everything leads to the palace. Those would be more autocratic.
CHANG: Interesting. Was there a particular artifact or a particular society that struck you especially?
FEINMAN: Yes. Well, Teotihuacan, a city in ancient Mexico in the first millennium A.D. is a particular example of a place where, though it was a huge city, very well laid out, there are very few, if any, representations of singular leaders. And most of the time, when important people are shown in art and other kinds of media, they are shown masked, so not individualized, and often in groups of more than a single individual. I think when a leader wants to be ever-present, aggrandized at scales larger than life, I think those tend to be indicators of more autocratic organization.
CHANG: Let's talk about societies that you deemed more autocratic, because you also point out that, in some cases, those autocratic rulers were elected. So how did you conclude, even after such elections, that these rulers were autocratic?
FEINMAN: I mean, we had very few elections, but it would be situations where they tended to concentrate power after an election and eliminate the other checks and balances, other institutions that were perhaps holding the concentration of power from them in earlier times, such as the case with Rome. We looked at Rome in the transition from the republican era to the imperial era, and you see changes of that sort, as well as public space being confiscated and turned into more private or personalized space of the ruler.
CHANG: Wow. Well, I am curious because I feel like some of the things you're pointing out about ancient democracies and ancient autocracies might apply today. Is there something you want people to take away from these findings?
FEINMAN: I think what I'd like the lesson to be is that history rhymes. It doesn't repeat. And I think in those rhymes, there are things that we do need to pay attention to. And I don't want to get more specific than that right now.
CHANG: Very diplomatic. Gary Feinman, curator of Mesoamerican, Central American and East Asian anthropology at the Field Museum, thank you very much.
FEINMAN: Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
