The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire by Kent Flannery, Joyce Marcus Page B

the alatunja, it had a different origin: passing the role of headman from father to son protected the ritual secrets of the group from outsiders. To understand how important these secrets were, we need to look at central Australian social logic.
    At birth, a child’s spirit left a state of purity and entered a profane world. Women were thought to remain profane throughout their lives. Men were profane as youths because they were still ignorant of their clan’s sacred lore. As a result, elders paid little attention to younger men. Eventually, beginning with his initiation, a youth would embark on an education that would return him to a state of purity. Sons were prized because they could become warriors, bring brides and victories to their clan, and eventually become elders. The sacred knowledge imparted to them was denied to women, but the latter had their own ritual secrets.
    Here we see a premise common to many societies with clans: one is not simply born Aranda or Arabana or Murngin or Walbiri; it takes years of effort to become a full member of one’s group.
    In the process of becoming Aranda, young men were taken to places where sacred paraphernalia were hidden. For example, they might be shown the bull-roarer—a slab of acacia wood on a cord—and see it whirled to produce a roaring sound, thought to be the voice of an ancestor. Called a churinga, or “sacred object,” each bull-roarer was alleged to have been made early in the world’s history. To handle it for the first time was to share in the lives of heroes past.
    Conflict, Peacemaking, and Death
    In Rousseau’s day the existence of religion was routinely attributed to the fact that humans are the only creatures who know that they will eventually die. While this explanation may sound plausible to educated Westerners, it does not work with most hunters and gatherers. To the Australian Aborigines, for example, there was no such thing as inevitable natural death. Death resulted either from homicide or witchcraft. One way to kill an enemy was to point in his direction with a special stick, singing over it to give it magical power. Especially deadly was the sharpened arm bone of a corpse. The pointing of this bone might be accompanied by the curse, “May your heart be rent asunder.”
    Sometimes a dying man would whisper the name of the person whose magic he believed was killing him. Then an avenger, his body coated with charcoal to make him invisible at night, his footsteps muffled by emu-feather slippers, set out to kill the offender. In the case of group offenses, Raymond Kelly’s principle of social substitutability applied. A vengeance party left to kill members of the offending group, traveling as far as 80 miles with spear-throwers, shields, boomerangs, and clubs. Eager to end hostilities, the offending group might agree to surrender two or three of its least popular members as long as the rest were spared. Figure 4 depicts the whole process, from bone-pointing to group revenge.
    While many tribes had enemies for neighbors, there was one person who could travel widely without fear of death: this was the sacred messenger. The messenger might, for example, be carrying the red-painted forearm bone of a deceased relative, showing it to normally hostile groups and inviting them to attend his relative’s final burial. Owing to his sacred mission, the messenger could not be harmed. However, after the burial ceremony, the bone might be given by the deceased’s father to his father’s sister’s sons. Their task was to avenge the decedent’s death, presumed to be caused by witchcraft.
    Australian burial ritual varied by tribe. Often it reflected the increased importance of ancestors in societies with clans. The Warramunga exposed corpses on tree platforms and then crushed and buried all the bones except for the one to be carried by the sacred messenger. When that last bone was finally interred, the deceased could be reincarnated. The Luritcha tribe sometimes