How Christianity Destroyed the Tribal Family

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Many thanks to my friend @RavignonCh for working with me on this video.
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What is feudalism? A common historic materialist perception of feudalism is that it was an economic social order, enforced by a warrior elite with the help of the Christian church to exploit a European peasantry. This perception however is false. Feudalism was itself a religious social order built upon and through the institutions of the church, in response to the instability following the collapse of the Roman Empire.
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Sources:
[1] Max Weber: The Protestant Work Ethic.
[2] John Hanjal: European Marriage Patterns in perspective.
[3] Alan Macfarlane: The Origins of English Individualism
[4] Marc Bloch: Feudal Society
[5] Jack Goody: The European Family
[6] Francis Fukuyama: The Origins of Political Order
[7] Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Émile (Books I-III)
(brittlebooks.library.illinois...)
[8] Karl Marx: Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations (Part I)
(www.marxists.org/archive/marx...)
[9] Samuel Ottewill-Soulsby (2016) ‘Those same cursed Saracens’: Charlemagne's campaigns in the Iberian Peninsula as religious warfare, Journal of Medieval History, 42:4, 405-428, DOI: 10.1080/03044181.2016.1167768
(www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bits...)
[10] Adriaan E. Verhulst, The Carolingian Economy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 160 pp. $50 (hardback), ISBN: 0-521-80869-3; $18 (paperback), ISBN: 0-521-00474-8.
(eh.net/book_reviews/the-carol...)
[11] Friedrich Engels: Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State. (1884) Part II: The Family, Chapter IV - The Monogamous Family (www.marxists.org/archive/marx...)
[12] Manifesto of the Communist Party, (1848) Chapter I: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat (www.marxists.org/archive/marx...)
Sponsorship (0:00)
Intro (0:51)
Modernization Theory (3:02)
Why Weber and Engels were wrong ​(3:34)
Non-tribal practices of medieval society (4:20)
Tribal social practices (5:05)
The origins of the error (6:00)
Why feudalism isn't tribal (8:12)
Religion in early Society (10:12)
The tribal clash with Christianity (11:31)
Christianity reorganizes Europe (12:32)
War creates the social foundation (13:49)
The Christian Church emerges as a social authority (14:55)
Christianity destroyed the tribal family (16:57)
The Impact of the missing European tribalism (18:27)
Conclusions (19:47)
Subscribe to Ravignon! (21:41)
Thank you again, and don't forget to subscribe to watch more.

[@jacksonmiller2886]

I see a lot of people who have trouble accepting the premise of the video due to exceptions like Southern Italy/Spain or noting that Europeans still keep track of and care about extended family. To the second point, I would say the point isn't that extended families no longer exist, its that they are no longer a primary political unit/thing to be loyal to. Might a 1400s Bavarian view his 5th cousin as family? Maybe. But would he break German common law, disobey his Lord, or embark on a blood feud because his 5th cousin said so? Probably not. In a feudal society a victim goes to a Lord or his agent to complain, not his cousin. In the modern day, the police. Compare this (or England, France, Benelux) to Albania, Greece, or Iraq, where extended families will feud and even kill one another over something like a stolen sheep. Clan identities can also extend to hundreds/thousands of people. Could you imagine that in rural Belgium? To the first point, it is worth noting that Southern Italy was held by the Byzantine Greeks and the Arabs for several hundred years past the establishment of feudal and republican states in Northern Italy. Southern Italy only became Latinized after the Norman conquest in the 1060's, a process that would take several hundred years. Muslims and followers of the Greek rite would make up a majority in most areas well into the 1200s. Greeks would remain a significant minority into the 1500s. This left a cultural impact, drawing Southern Italy half into the sphere of the Eastern cultural tradition. Basically Southern Italy has followed the Western tradition for ~400 years less than Northern Italy. His statement on the Scots is very similar to Southern Italy, feudalism only being introduced to those respective places by conquering outsiders, giving them more of a clan-like culture. I would make the same argument of Spain, where Muslims dominated into the 1100s, only finally being pushed out in 1492. Kraut's point on the large influence of the Catholic Church in breaking the clan-system holds true even if it did not succeed in doing so universally. Catholicism was present in Friesland and Scotland, though those places remained more tribal due to other factors like isolation and harsh terrain. This can be true while simultaneously seeing much evidence of his hypothesis in the historiography on a larger scale in the vast majority of Europe. Sure, urbanization may have played a part, but to blind ourselves to what clearly already occurred without urbanization builds a weak narrative. Additionally, if urbanization alone causes this phenomena so fast, then we would see it in the urbanized Middle East.

[@MehrabRahman]

I think it's too reductive to point to the influence of Catholicism versus Islam without looking more closely at the latter. I would say urbanization was far more important than is let on, since looking at North African cities like Tunis or Algiers we have records of higher average ages of marriage for women, and in Mamluk court records we have plenty of evidence of women suing and being sued, and of owning their own business and land, and giving land away in donations without someone else's approval. Where the societies diverge is in the political power of their tribes in the countryside, which only strengthened in the Middle East due to the weakness of regional governments to enforce law upon them. This had less to do with Abrahamic religion and more to do with the diffusion of both Frankish and Roman tribal and clan identities into one another, becoming little more than citizenship, while the invasions of actual nomads who maintained nomadic lifestyles apart from the urban life in the Middle East precluded the same from happening.

[@nicknickbon22]

But if you read Dante’s comedy you’ll see that yes, even in the 14th century people were prone to kill someone related to one who killed a member of his own enlarged family even generations before. All of this happened even though Florence probably had at that time the most advanced form of government in the entire world. Another example is Romeo and Juliette, which is a fiction based on a type of event that could be common even in the reinassance northern Italy.

[@tomasvrabec1845]

Exceptions in Southern Europe? I heard of those but from my personal experience this is also very common family structure in Central and eastern Europe. I myself knew the great grandkids of my grandmother's great Aunt (whom I know too) and even the land related behaviour would check in.

[@valer119]

As black person that seems crazy to me. My 1st and 2nd cousin's are important. Especially if you don't have sibling in the Same generation.

[@nicknickbon22]

@@valer119 in tribal societies we’re often speaking about 4th or even 5th grade cousins, and possibly even more far than that.

[@TheRamblingBooth]

I studied this in Oxford. The concept of Childhood throughout the centuries. Through a series of 8-10 papers, I arrived at the same conclusion you did. This video provides a succinct overview of all my research. Well done gents.

[@bramsturk619]

What was the name of the study you did in Oxford?

[@TheRamblingBooth]

@@bramsturk619 My Primary Tutorial was Early Church History 64-364 at Pembrooke, and my Secondary was was Early Modern Childhood Psychology at Wycliffe.

[@potatosalad9085]

sounds like a lot of credit hour money

[@JustanothaGuy]

@@TheRamblingBooth These sound like they were really fascinating to study, what was your favorite part of researching these subjects?

[@hacim42]

This is how you build a community. It went from "Hey I need some artists to help me finish my video" to "I am helping them out on starting their own video series" to "We made a collab video". That is actually amazing.

[@sam_ram]

Glad kraut is getting the praise he deserves for that. This kind of support for smaller channels from larger ones is rare to see on KZbin. Well done, Kraut.

[@him_That_is_me]

I'm a bit drunk right now but i want to tell you both that i truly appreciate your efforts in making history, politics and the history of both understandable and comprehensible for average viewers.

[@eliasaguilar8580]

Why did you say you were drunk

[@BooBooBlueBerry]

@@eliasaguilar8580 It's a way to deflect from being called emotional. As we all know, men aren't allowed to have emotions and therefore not allowed to express appreciation. If he's drunk, he's allowed to be emotional because he isn't in his right mind.

[@bootyholebandit2905]

@@BooBooBlueBerry stop snitching on me man. I never thought of it that way.

[@carltononeal5905]

@@eliasaguilar8580 because he's drunk

[@foxmccloud385]

boozer gang unite

[@MrHazz111]

As for the prevalence of religion in earlier societies, it's helpful to note that the word "Religion" itself, while it has classical roots, is very much a European concept bred in western Christendom. No other society prior to them being influenced by European ideas due to expansion and colonization had a similar concept/word. So the whole notion that religion is an optional bolt onto your life, something that you could partake in personally if you so chose, is really a post Protestant idea. In the past and in most cultures, what we call "Religion" forms your entire imaginative and cultural conception of life and the world.

[@Otterdisappointment]

I’ve been saying this for 3 years now PS. A big problem with “religious” is that it can be used in a pluralistic context. A religious India isn’t a religious France. A religious Asia in general is just 💀

[@DubmanicGetFlazed]

based

[@trad_m4839]

If we all stoped to think for a moment it's easy to realize that ideologies are as much of a religion as islam os cristianity, after all going abroad to fight in a marxist guerilla make as much economic sense as a crusade.

[@udon6031]

What do you think about the tondrakians then? Some of em were atheists

[@AmberyTear]

Basically all humankind is superstitious by nature.

[@sebastianbass2219]

A biologist once said “we evolved with religion to create systems of trust outside our immediate tribes and family.”

[@starmaker75]

Someone: Hello stranger Another someone: wait how can I trust Someone: I share the same religion and/or god. Another someone: okay welcome

[@sumkindacheeto]

Because that'll always be what people talk about to break ice at the first conversation with somebody: religion and politics.

[@DubmanicGetFlazed]

thats just wrong. originally religion WAS the tribe/immidiate family. but then… some families became more powerful then others and they conviced people to worship their ancestors instead of your own.

[@KevinJohnson-cv2no]

Eh, seems more like it was created for mental catharsis. Either so The Strong can convince themselves that their oppression of others is forgiven by the gods, depriving them of their guilt; or so the weak can convince themselves that their weakness is endorsed by the gods, depriving them of their motivation. Either one of the two, some sort of mental escape is sought

[@rayeya3138]

@@KevinJohnson-cv2no weird take but ok

[@sinistercrusader4981]

Glad that Kraut and Ravignon actually present a neutral and well researched view of how religion affects society instead of the cliched “le religion bad” view in many arguments regarding social development today.

[@LajtSejbr]

They go off on a tangent however and are vehemently pro-capitalist.

[@broorb4104]

healthy for me, one who often finds himself doing just that.

[@Alias_Anybody]

It's not "religion good" either though, he's making the case that organized monotheistic religion lays the groundwork for its own redundancy. In other words, the concept that religion evolves, with the endpoint being a rejection of God(s) and the supernatural.

[@redthunderboar1323]

Indeed, that's how I saw it. The Title was a little click baity but they made the point that Religion is ultimately not a tool but an organization and force. And like any other, it can do irrational things like go on a Crusade.

[@Sarahmint]

The human is inherently religious. Just look at the hive mind of progressives, atheists, "I believe in science" people, and political party cultists among other "non-religious" people

[@sapphron]

I swear if I see the "opium of the people" quote out of context again... the full quote is: "Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." The intent isn't to say that religion is meant to control the people, but that it dulls the pain that capitalist society causes the working people. That's not to say that Marx's materialism works with the reality of religion, just that this one quote is so constantly misused

[@LowestofheDead]

"Religion is cope" - Karl Marx

[@JoniWan77]

This quote is somehow more interesting, when you consider that if we take the information of this video for granted, at one point religion would have actually played a role in freeing the oppressed by changing the social order into something a bit more equal than before, and only later became what Marx considers opium by essentially stripping itself from its power in the process.

[@reintaler6355]

@@gracchus7782 "Organized/Institutional religions" to be more specific. Many of those thinkers were Deists or of some very obscure, organic Christian branches

[@hemidas]

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich." ~ Napoleon Bonaparte.

[@tomlxyz]

But in the end, doesn't it still benefit those ruling if the people are fed off by religion? And given that the common people in the west usually couldn't choose their religion freely seems to fit the narrative

[@dunnowy123]

I just read the WEIRDest People in the World and it had this premise too. You can trace many of the distinctive aspects of Western civilization back to the Catholic Church's frankly revolutionary approach to marriage and family. It's kind of nuts but the impact of that is the sort of thing that you start to see everywhere once you've learned about it. The author refers to socio-psychology as the Dark Matter of History and it's a concept I've been obsessed with since.

[@LoganLS0]

It always flows downhill from the family. You can trace the roots of modern day misery back to the Sexual Revolution.

[@Panteni87]

@@LoganLS0 Do you mean the rennaissance, the one of around 1900 or the one from the 60's? All three were sexual revolutions in their own right.

[@NP1066]

Yes but he kinda overlooks that monogamy for example already existed in ancient rome and greece. So it goes beyond the catholic church.

[@dunnowy123]

@@NP1066 that's a massive oversimplification of the argument and what the Church did lol. Monogamy became codified, there were restrictions on who you could have sex with, have children with, what you could do with those children, who you could marry, who would inherit property and assets etc.

[@zyansheep]

I got this book for my birthday and have been meaning to read it!

[@Stoneworks]

YOOO a new Kraut video, on a topic I'm super into, right when I was researching early Christianity in Europe... The youtube God hath blessed me this day

[@PakBallandSami]

Lol didn't accept a Minecraft KZbinr here nice to see you man

[@Stoneworks]

@@PakBallandSami I am a pseudo-intellectual before I am a minecraft youtuber B)

[@PakBallandSami]

@@Stoneworks lmao

[@moenadim7352]

Kraut and Lazerpig collab when

[@gorilmod9667]

stoneworks based??

[@storkorpen]

Didn't the Catholic church ban marriages of cousins? A rather important part of combating clans and clan-based power. That and the fact that priests weren't supposed to pass on their power and wealth to family. Hence the celibacy rule.

[@sumkindacheeto]

Yeah that's the interesting part since throughout history it was custom to marry your 3rd step cousin because of the shorter lifespans in that period and the lower chance of genetic abnormalities compared to closer relatives.

[@billcipherproductions1789]

The Habsburg exist.

[@asa1342]

@@billcipherproductions1789 they did. But part of the reason they married close kin was indeed because *it wasn’t allowed by canon law*. Therefore the marriage could be annulled easily. It was an exception that highlights the rule because it was a deliberate attempt to make a some level of a clan structure work in a society designed against clan structures.

[@JoniWan77]

@@asa1342 Interestingly enough you'll find hints at that all over European monarchies. In medieval literature you'll for example find a pretty big incentive on the lineage of ruling families and aligning your family origin with Augustus and thereby the advent of Jesus, which could be seen as a Christian attempt at divinization (e.g. Heinrichs von Veldeke: Eneasroman.). So even if Christianity may have broken these ideas ultimately down, they still persisted despite that. Heck, maybe the example I used is a deliberate subversion of tribal families tracing themselves back to the divine.

[@kevincuevas8877]

Keywords "supposed to" didn't stop some popes like Borgia from establishing papal dynasties

[@sbfcapnj]

Thank you for giving religion the proper *massive* cultural weight it deserves and for treating it as in and of itself an historical force and character. Well done.

[@lindenshepherd6085]

As opposed to the more common 20th century historical take that favored economics and politics as reasons for people to take action. It’s only been in smaller academic circles in the last twenty years that historians are starting to consider the real, heavy impact of religion on the Crusades. Before then, many historians cynically assumed that economic factors, church politics, and the need to occupy hundreds of well-armed young men were the main drivers of the Crusades. The prevailing idea was “We know that medieval people *said* they went for religious reasons, but why did they *really* go?” It assumes that the side effects and underlying reasons (economic prosperity, trade, getting rid of violent knights, etc.) were actually the true, main reason for the Crusades when they were just that: side effects and underlying reasons.

[@yoeyyoey8937]

He was kinda off base with some of the explanation of religion. The Abrahamic tradition is actually against the idea of people having equal access and experience of divinity, which was kinda the whole point. It worked to centralize authority within societies. Before, anyone could be a “god”, now there is only one god and you can only get to him through the church

[@yoeyyoey8937]

@@snuurferalangur4357 it is the Jewish and Christian tradition, but more so the Christian tradition. Where you need a priest or some other authority figure to be able to connect you with God. I know it’s not all Christianity but classical Christianity is pretty much like that.

[@yoeyyoey8937]

@@snuurferalangur4357 and also the Jews generally believe that they get special treatment from God and that spiritual development is directly connected to wealth generation. Some Christians also express views that they can get material help, such as the “prosperity gospel”-although if you think about it, most Christians believe they can change the material nature of the universe by asking for God to intercede on their behalf, which is known as prayer, so it’s not far off that people would conflate that with making money.

[@harrisonshone7769]

Slight correction. The Bourbons themselves are not the oldest family in Europe, they are just the senior most surviving branch of the house of Capet, which is. But this point doesn’t take away from the well researched nature of the video.

[@EmisoraRadioPatio]

Yeah, but no one calls the King of Spain Felipe VI de Capet. It would only cause confusion.

[@hollowt3a199]

My family and a good portion of my people converted to Christianity and moved to America after Laos turned communist and we became persecuted (this story being much more simplified than it really is). I’m a third generation immigrant and I can see how our old familial traditions are slowly eroding away as we have basically integrated with American culture. Now many of those who immigrated from Laos are still alive and keep a lot of the old ways intact, yet I myself do not understand or know everything of the old culture and I expect much of it to disappear in a few more generations. What we will likely carry on, however, is a strong sense of family bonds to our extended family and to our people’s community.

[@DavidH-lq9ih]

Expected another “Religion… BAD” vid, instead got a balanced explanation on how the Christian concept of marriage upended beliefs that had existed for millennia. Well done, Kraut.

[@duroburo7039]

I dont get what would be so bad with a "religion bad" vid, if it has arguments supporting its claim.

[@informant09]

@@duroburo7039 If you say "Religion is bad" you are just stupid.

[@monsieurdorgat6864]

@@duroburo7039 clearly he's sick of dissonance lol

[@KevinJohnson-cv2no]

@@duroburo7039 Yeah, people need to realize that not every belief requires some sort of grand deconstruction lmao; least of all beliefs that root their explanations in mysticism, inherently "immunizing" them against rational scrutiny to a certain degree from the get-go.

[@chadthundercock4806]

@@duroburo7039 It's trite and boring, I've already heard it a million times.

[@proton8689]

I am pretty certain that even with the nuclear family beginning due to Christianity, there was still some form of community raising. People still lived in the same villages for generations especially since most of them were farmers. So even with a typical husband and wife structure, they were still community bound. Everyone knew everyone and so they weren't going to pretend to be strangers to each other. The Marxist position I think was more than when the industrial revolution came, people no longer knew who was their own neighbours. It's not so much that the family structure was suddenly changed. Just that everyone got more isolated and it's more than the nuclear family survived.

[@Jhanzey]

i think this is a very good point. the whole video was great, but there could have been a *bit* more nuance about this subject in particular. the industrial revolution was as massive a shift in human society as the agricultural revolution. i'd agree with kraut that christian europe definitely upended a lot of pre-existing social norms, but the industrial revolution took what was left and atomized it.

[@empiricalandinquirical2435]

This is why the Suburbs exists. I was literally just arguing with environmental Marxists about why Americans want to have Suburbs. It is the desire for communities.

[@liviasilva3333]

@@empiricalandinquirical2435 as long as those suburbs arent car dependent, i dont see a problem with them

[@proton8689]

@@empiricalandinquirical2435 Given the car dependence and the history of classism and racism of the American suburbs. The issue of not knowing your neighbour might still be prevalent.

[@jaycrow6871]

so my question is how do you do a better community in a world of mega city's and strangers?

[@IMPERIALYT]

Fantastic video, well structured and the conclusion is well argued - my expertise is not on the 'dark ages' or the history of Christian Ecclesiasticism so I found this video very illuminating. There is just one thing I noticed however. At 4:06 it's stated that women had the right to own, inherit and manage land and sue as they wished, without the interference of another trustee. However, my reading (which admittedly is on 18-19th century British Common Law), suggests that women were often times not separate legal entities, if they were married their assets were transferred to a joint ownership primarily controlled by the husband (see William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England) - I believe this is a holdover from the Anglo-Norman period, as the term for this status is Femme couverte (woman who is covered for). Regardless, the situation for women was much less black and white, as both Harriet Taylor Mill and John Stuart Mill explain in The Subjection of Women, in the vast majority of cases property was transferred to the husband and legal independence was stripped from the wife - she would only receive custody and control of the assets if she were to be widowed without a male heir. In an era where daughters were used as political tools to expand the influence of political dynasties through the institution of marriage, it seems that the extent to which women could say they controlled their fates and assets was fairly limited in most cases. While some were permitted to hold property and do with it as they please, it was far less common, and they only truly became independent entities in the institution of marriage at the tail end of the 19th century after some significant campaigning by suffragettes against Gladstone's liberal government. Perhaps there were interstitial periods between the Norman Conquests and the industrial revolution where this was not as adhered to, if there is a source on what this bit of the video was based on I would love to read through it. apologies for the little ramble, otherwise fantastic video

[@PakBallandSami]

Great observation man

[@Blazo_Djurovic]

I was under impression that larger freedoms for women to own property and like during a period of Middle Ages was a result of massive depopulation due to plagues. There simply weren't enough people to fill all the necessary roles for women to just remain brooding mares, so women who lost husbands had to take up management of the lands.

[@annoyedbipolar7424]

There actually was a form of divorce that was based on the trial by combat system but designed to be fairer towards women. it was described in a battle manual along with illustrations but the practice died out around the 1500s

[@solsticefr9142]

From what I know , women , especially in England , had quite a few rights in medieval England (at least for the time) and although uncommon, women owning properties or being heads of families and buisnesses happened. My understanding of it is that industrialization was detremental to this, and resulted in a worse situation during the late 18th and early 19th century. Take the beer brewing industry around London. Many brewers were women , using it as a side hustle, and the even the brewing guild had women in it. However , with industrialization, the smaller producers (women) were outcompeted and this independence was taken away from then.

[@charlie11ng42]

''However, my reading (which admittedly is on 18-19th century British Common Law)'' when the protestants took over they rolled back many of the protections woman had under the Catholics.

[@a.bastianwiik5592]

I feel like this video lacks a part of the puzzle: Changes in agriculture. Again, as Kraut pointed out, we transpose our current situation to the past, modern urbanites tend to forget how "everyone" was a farmer back then. But the players are the almost the same: The vikings brought the "fisher&farmer who sent wares long distances in a knarr" lifestyle. The arab/al-andalus brought new forms of irrigation, amongst other things enabling a new range of fruits to grow. The catholic church and their monasterial stability made herbs, fruits and other "long-term investment" crops(such as wine) widely available. Suddenly the "dicatorship of the plough" was reduced as there were other alternatives to get carbs than the lord who owned/controlled the grain. As Alesina, Giuliano, Nunn (2013) points out: to operate a plough, one has to have a lot of upper body strength and that results in economically and politically depressed women. Wheat was a man-dominated endeavor and also a majority of calories in the diet of most settled people. So with introduction of new food were women could take part in the production, naturally women gained more power. When the Columbian exchange occured, potatoes would accelerate women's rights. It is not by chance that nations where potato-farming, fishing and sheepherding dominated first gave women the vote, and the wheat producers/large plantations/large ranches were reluctant to grant women such power.

[@xenoblad]

This makes sense, but I'm confused why all of this necessitates Christianity. Or are you disagreeing with the video on this point?

[@Carlos-ln8fd]

@@xenoblad the video says that religion was one of the causes along with wars and the decline of the Roman Empire. The comment mentions agriculture as another important reason for the cultural shift.

[@xenoblad]

@@Carlos-ln8fd well what confuses me is why is Christianity in particular a necessary component and not religion in general. Muslims had agriculture and war. Didn’t they also go through the same elimination of tribal relations? If not, what is it about Christianity in specific that enabled them to have this effect that other religions could not have.

[@Carlos-ln8fd]

@@xenoblad The medieval Catholic Church was a political power that oposed practices like marrying cousins and changed laws of inheritance, also gave authority to kings and rulers. This changed previous social structures. Greek and roman paganism was incredibly focused on family lineage. One of the main concerns in Ancient Greece was honoring your ancestors, which affected society in all sorts of ways. Christianity was a different religion that had ideas like equality and such which inevitably led to a change in society. I don't think the point of the video is to show that Christianity specifically affected European culture but to comment on how the marxist idea of historical materialism is completely wrong since it ignores how religion and other factors produced many of the social changes that Marx attributed to capitalism.

[@xenoblad]

@@Carlos-ln8fd isn’t this conflating independent views of the Catholic Church with Christianity though? I’m not an expert on Christianity, but it’s not clear to me that Christianity or the Bible is specifically or explicitly opposed to cousin marriages and supports inheritance for women. Regarding holy authority for rulers, plenty of other societies used arguments from holiness to justify the authority of their rulers. I’m not sure why Christianity alone can do this. The equality point I prefer to avoid since social equality as a concept is an extremely unstable and hyper malleable idea. Virtually any kind of society could fulfill some person’s vision of “equality”.

[@elsesome2707]

Something to think about. Although I am mildly confused by the claim that all three Abrahamic religions undermined the tribal family hierarchies, since one of the examples used in the video were Muslim patriarchies. While obviously this videos primary focus was on the gradual shift from clan structure to atomized family structure, I think it would be interesting to take a deeper dive into how and why the life in a tribal unit would have been different?

[@shooter5503]

Concepts such as banning forceful marriage of slain enemy widows, arbitration based on a neutral religious book of law, code of conduct to demand coin rather than revenge bloodshed, and limiting the amount of wives a man can marry at the same time. All of these things don’t go so far as the Papacy to destroy the clan but Sharia has done much in terms of eroding the clan family. Heck if you research about the Abbasid Revolution you can see the wide spread idea of rejecting clan favored government appointees and pro-Arab favoritism eventually leading to the ruling Umayyad Caliphate having to flee to Iberia.

[@WaffleSSSSSPLUS]

another example would the the catholics, especially in the philipines and central america they still maintain the tribal family structure. its weird they try to claim its due to the christainity. i believe the enlightenment and protestanism is the cause rather than christainity or abrahamic religions. largely catholic europeans countries still do maintain those tribal family structures as well like in greece and italy.

[@winzyl9546]

@@WaffleSSSSSPLUS the philippines was very late in the catholic business, their institutions are more colonialism laws of rulers than catholic rule of law, same goes for central america. Southern italy were also not part of the early catholic feudalism. Catholicism came to south italy only through the norman conquest, before that they were ruled by the byzantines, same with greece.

[@indiemickey]

@@WaffleSSSSSPLUS Another supporting example, but of the muslim religion is Turkey. I'd say they still have a strong tribal family structure, especially away from the big urban centers. Being protestant and latina, I also believe the enlightement and protestantism created a bigger divide by for example saying you don't need a mediator to access God and that no one is especially assigned to represent him (such as a Pope) , which ended up creating other fractures in the power structure.

[@WaffleSSSSSPLUS]

@@winzyl9546 even so you dont see the tribal families being erroded even now. can be said that catholism does appear to have the same effect unlike its protestant counterpart.

[@vladimirstok149]

Hey, Greek here. I felt the burn so to speak when you mentioned (from experience maybe ;p ?) how dating a greek goes, and while I can't disagree with that, I'd like to add a few thoughts on the matter. I feel like there's another side to the whole tribal family structure that wasn't mentioned, which left me feeling like the video gave a mostly negative view on it. But there's an upside! In such family structures, an individual is much less likely to be left fending for himself if he's down on his luck, and I can't remember the last time I saw a greek lying around on the street, and while they may be some (in cities like Athens), I wouldn't put this on the same level as homelessness in places like France or Germany, which seems like it has its own culture even (dogs, backpacks, beers). There's also a quote from Varoufakis (a can of worms among greeks, but I think his intellect is definitely worthwhile) that I really like, where he says ~"the poor in america has absolutely nothing, meanwhile if you're poor in a place like india you still have some dignity, your village etc..". I'm curious to find out in what way I'm wrong though ;) Also, welcome back! Good recovery, and take it easy ;)

[@augusthoglund6053]

Churches can keep people off the street in a non-tribal feudal society, but generally tribal structures are unrivaled in their ability to create a safety net in the absence of government stability. My thoughts on a tribal politics is that they aren’t absolutely useful or useless, but that their utility is always *relative* to outside politics. In a society where preexisting state structures are weak or unreliable, and where job opportunities are lousy regardless of where you move too, the sacrifice in mobility become quite meaningless, and respecting tribal politics is a pretty smart move that will save you from being taken advantage of.

[@savabout6487]

As a fellow Greek I’m curious if the title/theisis is the best. Greece has been a Christian people for 2000 years. This to me was more about western feudalism and the role Christianity played in that. Byzantine never had the same feudal structure

[@yaelvacacenteno1382]

@@savabout6487 I think it’s why the video specifies that it was mostly the Latin Church's thing and not Christianity as a whole

[@savabout6487]

@@yaelvacacenteno1382 every true. but the title can be a little misleading I guess.haha

[@yoeyyoey8937]

This is true. I live in the homeless capital of the world and you never see Asians, Muslims, or Hindus on the street. With the extended family structure you get a lot of support and incentive to get better

[@lickingawindow3060]

I've found the blatant disregard for the cultural, economic, philosophical and political effects of Christianity/Islam on the western world to be quite puzzling. The Anti-theist and Marxist normally fall to the same practices they accuse their "religious enemies" of, namely ignorance of a lack of consideration of why things developed when they developed, and how. It's amazing to see work like this done to simplify the topic, and make it incredibly easier to have an understanding of a much broader topic that has massively affected the world today. So thank you, and excellent work as always.

[@KingArthur39]

Also, Christianity is still very important to many nations/families today. That's why socialism in Latin America tolerates Christians, because being against it would be highly unpopular in countries with 80% of Christians

[@trad_m4839]

@@KingArthur39 as a latin american I would argue that the our left (the one of the cold war, not the modern one, aldo obviously influences remain) was actually born out of the latin american catholic church, liberation theology was actually the ideological background neded for the ideology to grow here, and not the oposit more mainstrem vision that as the ideology grew the ideology tooked a grip on the church

[@RM-el3gw]

@@trad_m4839 what is the Latin American left? Communists marxists socialists and othe rsimilar plagues surged in latin american thanks to the intervention of the soviet union and were propelled forward by multiple groups that were guerrillas etc. In Colombia alone there were (some still survive) several guerrillas that were Marxist. And if anything, they were not very friendly towrds the Church.

[@trad_m4839]

@@RM-el3gw they were certainly not friendly toward the church, but as a catholic my self I would argue that liberation theology is bigger enemy of catholicism than guerillas, but my point is not that both are direct allies ploting together, but just as I right, the thing that allowed socialism to get out of college campus to the masses were liberation theology, not the church in it's entirity, aldo certainly soviet influence can be blamed for the growth of this group inside the church.

[@KevinJohnson-cv2no]

Marxism is inherently compatible with Judeo-Christian morality. One is secular, the other is theological, but they both preach the same core values: equality should be hailed, meekness & poverty are noble, compassion for the fellow man, demonization of ability & those who exalt themselves over others, demonization of the accumulation of wealth & power, encouragement towards moderate, simple communities and lifestyles, humility as a virtue, etc. "Marxism is Christianity without the god."

[@neonjesus8831]

Christianity's introduction of actual monogamy into europe was a good thing tbh.

[@boarfaceswinejaw4516]

i think the flaw in this video is failing to go into how Christianity changed and adapted to european pagan lifestyles, customs and traditions in general, and how christianity rather than changing european lifestyles (at least at first) focused squarely and primarily at infiltrating and subverting practices and laws. The Italians still got a stronger sense of tribal familial units than, for example, scandinavia. and Scandinavia (and possibly germania at large) had a tradition of women having more societal leeway potentially dating back since before christianity even existed. so Saying that christianity primarily had the impact of making women more independant and having that be a core factor in why the tribal family structures sundered doesnt make a whole lot of sense. Odds are that the concepts that christianty went on to codify and unwittinly destroy the tribal family with already existed in european cultures, they were just further emphasized and, very importantly, somewhat monopolized through the institution of christian marriage. This meant that a key way in which families could unite, merge or split, were suddenly done entirely within the court of the church itself.

[@Raky2427]

I agree

[@tylersmith3139]

I wouldn't say Christianity changed, but like you said, definitely subverted and commandeered pagan practices into Christian ones such as turning the Roman holiday Saturnus which was originally meant to worship the Roman God Saturn/Kronos into a day celebrating Jesus' birth/Christmas or turning Irish pagan gods into Saints to get the Irish to convert to Christianity.

[@boarfaceswinejaw4516]

@@tylersmith3139 Exactly. Christianity may, for all intents and purposes, be a "foreign religion", but outside of some middle-eastern tendencies (strict sexual conduct) christianity became a european religion. its not a coincidence that out of all the abrahamic religions, christianity is the only one that doesnt care about what you eat or whether you got foreskin or not.

[@cerdic6305]

@@tylersmith3139 The idea of Saturnalia being the origin of Christmas is not true. There are a number of very well researched videos on the topic

[@georgeschmall9254]

@@cerdic6305 thats correct. December 25th used to be the winter solstice. A new year brings a new sun.

[@carsonianthegreat4672]

There seems to be a major flaw in this argument. Even in my grandparents youth, in the American Midwest, they lived in what was effectively a kinship society with nuclear family “nodes.” The farm was passed down from father to eldest son, and the extended family was large, multigenerational (they were regularly interacting with 4th or 5th cousins), and intricately connected. There were also deep social obligations to care for their elders in old age. They were also all German-American Catholics.

[@itsfinnickbitch63]

crazy how fast things have chenaged then. i personally dont even know who my 2nd cousins are or if they even exist. family is almost non existent in my daily life

[@kevincronk7981]

WOO A NEW KRAUT VIDEO! You always make such high quality videos, always so glad to see a new one released, but also don't burn yourself out I've seen in your community posts about how you're working really hard to make lots of new videos quickly, and I would rather have fewer Kraut videos that retain their high quality without you getting burnt out than too many that you can't put as much work on each one and get too tired.

[@constantine1545]

I Think the role that Christianity played in ending polygomy should have been talked about. That was a equalizer to society

[@Adsper2000]

Yep. The easiest way to tell how hierarchical a society is is to find out if they have polygamy or not.

[@leftenantthunder]

and as religion fades, it seems that polygamy is making a comeback

[@DJ1573]

@@leftenantthunder You sound like its a bad thing

[@genghiskhan5701]

@@DJ1573 It is a bad thing. Polygamy was phased out by all civilized societies for a good reason. Unless you are rich, hot or both, there is no way you, an average man, will be able to lay with 7 hot women since they will be looking for the rich and hot men due to simple biological wiring. Average men being deprived of good wives, is a recipe of disaster as they will become violent. I mean imagine a peasant wants to marry his childhood friend only to have her and the rest of the girls in the village taken by the Lord to be added to his harem. Pretty sure you will be pissed Strict Monogamy restricts everyone including the rich and the chads, to only have one woman and any more than that will be ostracized.

[@yotamkaspi8508]

Ancient Greece and Rome already had strictly monogomous marraiges though

[@rook9714]

Also worth noting that when Marx said religion was an opiate, he had a different understanding of that than a modern, post-opiate crisis/war on drugs observer might assume. It's more like a 'usefup, practical drug' that might not be ideal in an ideal world, but helps you get through the day

[@SolarFlareAmerica]

Yes, thank you for stating this!

[@rook9714]

Like right before he says it's the opium of the people he opens with: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions."

[@dwarvenminer3329]

Wasn't the sale of Opium and drugs well established in Britain by that point though? Especially since the Opium wars had already occurred in 1839 onwards.

[@domaxltv]

@@dwarvenminer3329 yes, but the wider thought of "drugs are bad" only properly came into being during the 20th century

[@dwarvenminer3329]

@@domaxltv Hm, that makes sense

[@miguelpadeiro762]

Your videos touch one of my biggest fascinations on the subject of history, thank you for your hard work alongside the rest of the team's behind these, everytime you upload, it is like a little holiday, keep it up👍

[@devinmes1868]

No matter how many times I watch these videos, I am not only wowed by the concepts that you present and the lengths you go through to prove them, but also the amount of research you do every video. They end up covering a vast range of topics, which can make them informative to just above everyone.

[@haroldhamburgler]

12:04 Kraut claims that early Christians took "an especial strong stance against ... Adoption." Does any one have a source for this claim? I have never herd it before and google is not producing any relevant results. It is also not clear from the listed sources what paper this claim would have come from.

[@spartanx9293]

I thought that was a Muslim thing there is no biblical justification to be against adoption

[@gv5884]

I would like to know too.

[@codwhores6776]

The role of Jewish belief and custom in comparison to Christianity and Islam is really interesting, as it acts sort of as a bridge between the modern universalist nature of Islam and Christianity and the hyper local polytheistic Levantine religions that emerged before it. Through Halakha (Jewish Law) and the customs of Jews in the past (and still today) you can see evidence of both. You do have the "all people are created equal" aspect like you mentioned, but also the assigning of a distinct spiritual role of the Jewish nation and of the Bnei Yisroel. Additionally, extended family lines still exist in the cases of the two preistly and preistly-adjacent lineages of the Kohenim and Levi'im.

[@Vaelmael]

My thoughts exactly. "Abrahamic" religions as a framework in this video to tie Christianity, Islam, and Jews together is understandable from the external position of someone who is not Jewish, and who thinks from an especially recent point of view that Jewish is a religious category. But what it misses is that Jews are not functionally a religious group and are still very clearly possessing these kinship networks. Indeed, much has already been written on the problems of assimilation for Jews in places like America because of their radically different, far more communal ideas of what "family" is as compared to their European-American counterparts, and the extremely high rate of divorce between Jewish and White/Christian spouses often features those exact differences as a central point. Funnily enough, I am reminded of the scene in "This is 40", where Leslie Mann indicates that she and her father perfectly understand that they have no obligations to each other, and that this is ideal, while Paul Rudd [who is Jewish, and whose character is Jewish] indicates that for Jews it is by default understood that they have obligations to their family members, which infuriates his white Protestant wife. So yeah, Jews do not fit neatly into this video because Jews obviously are an extremely kinship-heavy group. The only limiting factor on that is simply how Christianized specific Jews are, which is measured by degrees of assimilation into American society. If anything then, the fact that one can see reductions in Jewish kinship strength by those degrees of assimilation really strengthens @Kraut's perspective that Christianity is at the root of the breakdown of the traditional ethnic family structure. There is quite simply an example that can be viewed in real time right now through Jews who, thusly assimilated, find excuses not to go kinship events, voice opinions that are actively anti-kinship out of the learned belief that kinship is detrimental to society, marry non-Jews who already don't plan major kinship events, and increasingly break their family connections to one another. So in a nutshell I think what this video is missing is that it's just attaching too much importance to "There is only one God"-at least in Jewish thinking. That idea is there for Jews, but it definitely has not eroded kinship cultures or traditional class-divisions, exactly as you pointed out.

[@Fireclaws10]

It would have been good if you’d defined “tribal”. If you’re talking about hunter gatherer societies, i’d hard disagree with them being mostly patriarchal. Moving up there to villages, it really strongly depends on the culture whether they’re patriarchal or matriarchal. Though if you’re moving into farming civilisations, definitely the vast majority would be patriarchal. Good video tho.

[@patrickblanchette4337]

Good point; I’ve heard that a lot of the Amerindian societies in North America were often matrilineal and had great standards for the treatment of women.

[@Lilliathi]

Matriarchies have always been extremely rare.

[@tylersmith3139]

@@patrickblanchette4337 I really find them hard to classify as Matriarchal, Men had very important political roles and were often the leaders of towns. It's just that both men and women could achieve high status as elders of a community as opposed to traditional Patriarchal societies. They fit better as Gerontocracy(older members of the society rule/guide). In many of these societies, the influence of elders no matter the gender was very high since it was seen that elders have more life experience and thus knowledge than others.

[@anonperson3972]

Indo european cultures inherited a patriarchal structure. Thus most of Europe, lots of central Asia, some of the middle east and India. So for the purposes of this topic it is reasonable to assume patriarchal culture with other groups being the exception (in the context of Europe)

[@abdiabdi3225]

Finally I found a comment expressing what I was thinking. For a bit of a story I'm Somali while Somalis do have a very strong clans and a system in which they work together. Things like buying and selling land or animals was just normal everyday stuff. Heck the main thing still keeping it going is the fact there hasn't been a state on which people could rely on as fair Judge to take an appropiate decision based on the facts presented to them. The main function of the clan is to essentially to be the lawyers or the payers of money for any damage this isn't even done by clans as they're too big but rather by sub-sub clans or even further down the legal system which is the basis of this is called Xeer.

[@WillowGardener]

There is a glaring anthropological problem in this analysis--that being the assumption that all "tribal" societies are patriarchal. To my knowledge, this is largely true of Indo-European descended societies, but is not always true of African or Native American societies. In the Haudenosaunee Confederation, for instance, property was exclusively owned by women. It's very important not to paint "tribal" people with a broad brush, as the term is very broad and vague, and there is tremendous variation in the cultures that are often classified this way. For instance, small migratory bands of around ~20 related individuals behave very differently from sedentary farming communities of several hundred. We should not be lumping all of these groups together.

[@quitmarck]

You are right, but patriarchal societies still tend to be a lot more common than otherwise. This is because of men being more capable hunters/warriors on average, so in hunter-gatherer societies they simply tend to have a stronger hold on the monopoly of violence plus the most prestigious part of food production.

[@NP1066]

That's absolutely true. But it's negligeble when you compare the majority of traditional agricultural and semi-agricultural (sometimes urban) of most big societies around Middle East, North Africa, India and East Asia to Europe.

[@WillowGardener]

@@quitmarck To my knowledge, patriarchy mostly tends to dominate after a group has become sedentary, and especially when a group is heavily reliant on large animals in dry climates (where physical strength is required to plow the land and handle the large animals)--in those instances, it is the economic power granted by physical strength, rather than the monopoly on violence, that leads to a lopsided power dynamic.

[@aethernaut1899]

Yes this was an unfortunate part of this very interesting video. You could still make the same points by restricting your generalizations to how European societies were before Christianity...

[@ottovonbismarck2558]

@@NP1066 Id like more sources on that, because most hunter-gatherer african tribes ive read about tended to be patriarchical. Only example I usually see people cite is the Haudenossaunee.

[@andrewmetz9267]

Yet again, SO glad I tuned in. Balanced, true, mature and well explained as a counterargument. In a debate, you guys would win hands down. Very glad you decided to try this, and will be linking to Rav's you tube link right after I finish this message.

[@andrewlechner6343]

Personally, I am glad for this. The nuclear family allows much more independence for its members and allows individuals more freedom of movement without since they are not (legally) beholden to their clan. This is a downside for the traditional clan leaders but was a massive boon for those that would regularly be much lower ranking.

[@halfwayATfinish]

Perhaps - sadly, there’s also downsides to nuclear families, such as that pervasive pest known as abuse. As someone raised in a nuclear family with abusive parents, I had almost no autonomy and bent myself to their every whim to keep the illusion of peace. Structurally, I was at the bottom of the ladder - although as you’ve pointed out a good thing is that I was not legally beholden to stay with the abusers.

[@DubmanicGetFlazed]

they want you isolated and alone… so they can exploit you for all your worth… what you think ALL the old tribes became nuclear families? hell no! they destroyed the tribal structure of rival tribes that threatened them. i hate to break it to you but… you should NOT be happy that your tribe was one of the ones that was divided and conquered. you work for them and you don't even know it.

[@andrewlechner6343]

@@halfwayATfinish Perhaps, though it is worth noting that potential abuse by superiors is a problem inherent to all family structures. The nuclear family results in the abuse only lasts till the abused individual is self-sufficient (though I must admit that abuse makes reaching self-sufficiency much harder in many situations). It much harder to leave a larger clan even when maturity is reached.

[@JPG.01]

@@halfwayATfinish And now imagine that abuse, but on the level of a tribe. A village clamping down against their lowest. That downside you mentioned is actually a major upside. Due to the shrinking of the family unit down to the nuclear family, the scale of abuse has also shrunk. Of course... all abuse is bad and you have my sympathy for having to go through what you went through. But nuclear families lessen the scale on which it can happen and by doing so can allow for a third entity, an authority above the parents, to step in and actually stop the abuse. If said abuse is reported to said entity. Which often fails. But we can't judge a system by the times it isn't working or fails. Humans are flawed creatures, and due to these flaws we are incapable of creating a system that works perfectly for everybody 100% of the time. Anything created by flawed creatures can only be flawed itself. In a tribal society though, said abuse might not only not be stopped. It might be mandated. Look at any mafia and their clan structure and you will understand what I mean.

[@andreascovano7742]

On the other hand this also creates a massive material problem on the individuals were stress falls on only 2 people. It's why nuclear families are having trouble with having kids despite the various economic incentives, whilst larger families are able to better deal with stress in some situations.

[@tomasvrabec1845]

I remain somewhat sceptical and unconvinced as I am from Central Europe, from a Tribally structured family which fits the description (with reason as it's not always so heavily hierarchical). It is less and less common but still not unusual. At the same time there is a lot of cultural literature which depicts these family structures from post modern times back to 1600s. All always Catholic.

[@meneither3834]

Which part of central Europe are we talking about may I ask ?

[@tomasvrabec1845]

@@meneither3834 I mean, there are 4/5 countries in Central Europe. Most of them are very closely related in many ways. For me it would be near the Tri-border of the three Wester. Slavic Nations (Czechia, Slovakia a do Poland). Why?

[@mynameisjeff869]

​@@tomasvrabec1845Hmm interesting. I am from Czechia, Moravia to be specific, and I've never seen any tribal family around here. And I of course travel around Slovakia and Poland as well.

[@ivanlaplante]

Ravignon is awesome! I am super glad i discovered him thanks to you, and i personally took his series on my homeland Quebec as a precious, unexpected and much needed gift. Easily one of the best KZbin content about our history, if not THE best, French included. I recommend it to anyone enjoying Kraut'a content, you won't be disappointed.

[@OliveOilFan]

This mainly applies to the protestant family. In places like orthodox Christianity or oriental or even Roman Catholic households, community raising is still very common

[@Symphonicrockfran]

Exactly

[@flashback4588]

I think its mostly due to the fact that most catholic and orthodox countries are poor compared to protestant countries so family and extended family stick together I cant speak for orthodox but ive seen catholic families seperate and once they are in the USA

[@Symphonicrockfran]

Also, here in third world countries, poverty plays an essential role. There is no money so entire families share the same household. Aunts/uncles and grandpas/mas live together helping to raise the children and bringing money to the family

[@SamAronow]

@@flashback4588 I'm Jewish, so neither Catholic nor Orthodox, but there's a shared cultural understanding between all our communities which came to the US around the same time. All of my third cousins and I are descended from the five siblings who immigrated to the US over 100 years ago and we're still in touch.

[@vorynrosethorn903]

This did not kill the extended family, it killed the tribal organisations that families used to be a part of and still are or were prior to colonial influence outside the west.

[@nomic655]

Where this video started to make most sense is when you talked about how tribal families persisted throughout Eastern Christianity and gave the example of "dating a Greek". I've noticed that even the idea of dating in Greece is a topic talked about in the greater family very often, and usually everyone gets to have a say on it. Something that I don't notice at all in western European families. And it makes sense. Christianity is the reason tribal families fell, not economics. It's just kind of silly to see marxists only view history within the scope of their current interests.

[@TheJeremyKentBGross]

I dated a Turkish girl a decade ago, and my very limited exposure to her family indicated some possible similarities. Turkey and Greece aren't just geographically near, Byzantium was founded as a Greek colony, about 600BC if memory serves, which became Constantinople, and then Istanbul. Despite that it's Muslim for about 1000 years, I suspect some cultural similarities.

[@PA-1000]

Propaganda will always be propaganda

[@nomic655]

​@@TheJeremyKentBGross Byzantium was indeed a Greek colony founded around 600 B.C.. In 330 A.D., Constantine the Great founded Constantinople on top of Byzantium, as a "New Rome". Nowdays we call the 2nd Roman Empire as "Byzantine Empire", though in that day the Greeks referred to themselves as "Romans". The city was conquered in 1453 and spent the rest of time under Muslim control but with severe Orthodox influence. The "1000 years" you said was just wrong. I can assume your limited exposure to your ex's family was probably because she didn't want them to know about you, because the word would spread rapidly and everyone would have an opinion and she'd feel embarassed. But that has to do with how tribal families persisted in the region, not with Byzantium or Constantinople.

[@nomic655]

@@PA-1000 It's not just that. I understand propaganda, why it exists. Though I can't understand how can someone base their entire ideology on propaganda. How can one of their basic beliefs be built from the ground up from propaganda. I can see someone using propaganda, but not being made of it. Then they all say that X and Y country "wasn't really socialist" to justify how their ideology is self destructive. But what do you expect when you build your house from wheat.

[@TheJeremyKentBGross]

@@nomic655 The 1k years was a rounded guess based on watching some Turkish show about the father of founder of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, which was in the mid 1200s if memory serves. So yeah, I was already rounding a couple hundred years. My Ex: yeah, I got the impression she wasn't interested in the rest of the family knowing about me, except her cousin. But her cousins husband who was already well off started pressuring me to take out loans for him in Western Europe to the tune of 100k+. And I was like.. eh.. what mate? I mean, I get that I'm a house guest but that's a steep ask for someone you just met who's only been with your wife's cousin for 4 months. However your last point seems to have missed mine. Obviously I was talking about tribal structures, but noting that they sound similar to the Greek ones, and that the two share a history, at a minimum through Istanbul, but it sounds more recent than that too if Eastern Orthodox was still common under Islamic rule.

[@panagiotismagos3649]

Excellent video, although as a greek, I would like to note that tribal kinships have mostly been broken in urban Greek society, which, due to the massive urbanisation of the country, is pretty much the majority of the population. Far-flung or isolated regions such as Crete, the southern peloponese or the northern macedonian and epirote borderlands may still have very intesnce broader family bonds, but this is very much looked at as something interesting an noteworthy exactly because of the fact it is very uncommon in developed, centralised cities such as Athens or Thessaloniki. Greece has in the modern era very intensly attempted to adopt a European or Western identity, and in doing so the massive family units that are so commonly celebrated or depicted in films about greece have severely lost their relevance in modern culture. That isnt to say they arent more predominant here than in a place like France or Belgium, its just that I think this video makes a bit of on overstatement on how much they have persevered in the present greek society

[@andreascovano7742]

Very interesting but it lacks some nuance. Russia, Romania and the south slavs east of croatia were all Orthodox christian but lack the large tribal families that greeks possess. Meanwhile Italy has some very large paternal structures indeed and usually one is far more tied to ones family.

[@narsimhas1360]

They weren’t catholic in the dark ages

[@andreascovano7742]

@@Etaoinshrdlu69 There is little to no presence of these family structures before communism.

[@andreascovano7742]

@@narsimhas1360 Italy was catholic since the roman period.

[@sliftylovesyou]

@@andreascovano7742 not the south which only became catholic after the normans conquered it

[@andreascovano7742]

@@sliftylovesyou A) A part from puglia, sicily and parts of calabria, that region was ruled by longobard catholic rulers. B) Fundamentally the difference was irrelevant at the time since the separation between east and west happened just as the normans were conquering the area. C)Large family dynamics are not restricted to the south of italy.

[@dreizer1272]

“Babe wake up, Kraut just uploaded a new video.”

[@eunicebrimble6798]

Great to see Ravignon here in this. You guys did an excellent job as usual. Keep up the great work Kraut your videos are second to none, and Ravy my boy I’m still waiting for Québec parte trois!!! S’il te plait, ne me fais pas attendre plus longtemps!!!

[@Carlos-ln8fd]

Your videos have helped me so much understanding cultures from history like Ancient Greece and India. Knowing what their religions were actually like gives you so much insight into their lives and ideas.

[@Blazo_Djurovic]

I'm not sure how much this one hangs together. There seem to be too many examples that work otherwise for this to be a workable explanation. Others have mentioned that tribal and paternalistic societies are even still and definitely were present at the start of 20th century even in places one would consider Western Europe. Also, I am not sure how much rule passed through strict primogeniture in actual early tribal familly structures rather down the line of elderness. In any case I would like to talk about a different problem. I am not sure how much we can call Rome a paternalistic tribal familly society which was supposedly obsessed with passing the rule down familly lines. While family was certainly important part of one's identity, Rome even before the autocratic times of the Principess and later Emperors had an idea that it didn't matter that your family descended from someone important if nobody from it had achieved much in recent years. This was one of driving forces on Cesar, given that Julii, while directly descended from one of persons in founding myth of Rome, hadn't produced significant public servants in a while and therefore were thought little of. The only real dynasty that I could remember off the top of my head that lasted for a while were Julio Claudi which indeed were pretty obsessed with lineage and them stemming from Cesar. But pretty much all others didn't last more than couple rulers who were directly related by blood (lines which were connected through adoption tended to last longer), and a surprising amount of new dynasty founders tended to be nobodies who rose through merit through the army. Tribal or not, to me largely depends on how tied to some place people were. People working the land, tend to be tied to that land. They can't easily move elsewhere, therefore forming large famillies, and over time one familly moving into some valley will grow into a clan/brotherhood of several families. In examples I am locally familiar these tribal villages would still make decisions semi democratically by getting together all married males and discussing what to do or who to appoint as their leader/representative for some trouble. Meanwhile city people would most likely be labourers or craftmen. If they moved elsewhere, they did not need to bring their lands with them to sustain themselves, leading to less of a need for big famillies.

[@Gniew2]

Your last point is exactly why I think this whole video hasn't much sense. In my humble opinion the whole point of 'destroying' the extended family ties is because of workforce going somewhere else where they just didn't have so many family members in place. I speak kinda from experience. My family is poor landowner 'nobility' in catholic Poland with unique surname - it's easy to spot where we live, because of that surname. About 500 years of living in the same place within about 60 km radius. It's just in the last few decades that we started moving and going somewhere else, mostly university graduates - probably because of this communism thing and nationalizing farms. The whole family is quite well knit, obviously not like we would do revenge killings or something like that. But I assume it might have been seen as a 'clan' of sorts to survive for that long in one place through so many changes. There are many families like that. Poland is holier than Pope, so according to this video it shouldn't happen.

[@DubmanicGetFlazed]

great comment

[@Blazo_Djurovic]

@@ArawnOfAnnwn As far as Romans are concerned, an Emperor taking power by getting the army on board and after he won being hailed by the people (of Rome or Constantinople) as Emperor would be pretty legal, because 2/3 of pillars of the state support their reign, and res publicus was satisfied given that people hailed them as Emperor. In later stages of Eastern Rome, you would have armies go rogue, look about for a suitable Emperor and then turn up under the walls of Constantinople to see if people of Constantinople might prefer this new guy and would open the gates for them :D

[@joellaz9836]

*Unlike medieval royalty, the Romans were more concerned with continuity of family name than with bloodline.[2] If a man recognized a child as his, this was accepted by law, and the issue of who the biological father was did not arise.[2] If a child was not recognized, he or she could be exposed or brought up as a slave. For example, Emperor Claudius initially accepted a girl as his daughter, but later rejected her and had her exposed.[2] Emperors often adopted their successors. There are no recorded examples of aristocrats in classical times accusing other aristocrats of being illegitimate, as was common in later periods.[2]*

[@legendary7957yahoo]

totally agree

[@SomasAcademy]

~5:46 This claim seems highly dubious to me - the Hopi and Haudenosaunee spring to mind as clear counterexamples to the claim that within kinship societies women are only given rights and social value through continuing male lineages, and there are many other examples of societies which aren't explicitly matrilineal but where the claim still doesn't seem to hold up, such as the !Kung, where women's primary value to society is through their gathering and children are treated as equally belonging to both of their parents. It seems like the kind of claim an early/mid-20th century Anthropologist would make based on studying a handful of examples and extrapolating their social models onto "primitive society" as a whole.

[@bombocrusty4251]

Which ironically those are the kind of claims he's arguing against. Ironically in trying to prove how dumb the big dumb Marxists are (clearly a major inspiration for this video since its brought up like 4 times) he sorta makes the equal opposite mistake in over generalizing and applying one size fits all analysis and broad sweeping statements about complex societies which in reality had very little do with and existed at opposite corners of the globe

[@lampshade7218]

As a Christian who loves your videos, I was expecting this to be a bash session and a video I might avoid. Glad I made myself watch it, unbiased opinion that every side and opinion maybe be able to watch and understand. Gets a thump's up from me

[@qjtvaddict]

Just treat people better

[@swesleyc7]

Christ be with you.

[@augustoch.7341]

I cant believe that I lived to see the Anglosphere being introduced to the Annales School of historiography, with Marc Bloch no less. Decades late but better than the constant Hegelian drivel that you see on public schools and "based" youtuber historians with no academic background whatsoever. The Cheese and the Worms by Ginzburg if you want more medieval Annales stuff.

[@notasmurph1899]

As a young student of history, could you please explain what this all means? Especially what you mean by "Hegelian drivel". Just curious! :)

[@augustoch.7341]

@@notasmurph1899 Hegel serves as the basis of historical Positivism and Marxism. Both see History as the struggle to reach an ideal society, be it the history of the Nation-State, the case of Positivism, or the history of the oppressed for Marxism. Both create History using the same tools and language, even if their aims are different. Around the 1920s a group of French historians, Marc Bloch included, unhappy how History was being coopted by the political movements of the beginning of the century created the Annales Journal of History, focusing on the microhistory, the social history, the history of mentalities, rejecting the idea of historical narrative or end of history.

[@notasmurph1899]

@@augustoch.7341 Ah, thank you!

[@RavignonCh]

I am a leftist and I think a common mistake we make is recommend to people they revisit very old literature. Without the right academic setting it's hard to analyze things properly. Telling people to read many of Marx's writings is like telling someone who wants to learn about evolution to read Darwin's Origin of Species - whatever value there might be in there, it's better to consult it in contrast with the 100 years of new science we have. I am glad we could make this. It's the kind of thing that only could've come up with combined efforts across views :)

[@PakBallandSami]

hiii

[@uchennanwogu2142]

how is this comment 2 days old???

[@PakBallandSami]

@@uchennanwogu2142 lol may be just maybe this video was unlisted for the people who donated to kraut shocking I know

[@vorynrosethorn903]

The issue with that is that can easily be misled by works which even now are built on assumptions which have since been contradicted or debunked, it's valuable to go back and establish the veracity of the information you are working off, but if you did that you probably wouldn't be a leftist.

[@DubmanicGetFlazed]

communism, and leftism in general is a continuation of the social trends in christianity. all three of them are individualist ideologies designed to divide and conquer a people t make them easier to rule. communism is an individualist ideology because “what” is it that should be equal? the individual. the amorphous “greater good” one aspires to work for, amounts in reality to slaving for bureaucrats. leftism comes so close… so close… but it misses the crucial information. At least its heart is in the right place. (i give the benefit of doubt) great vid btw. enjoyed.

[@TolaRat]

Very ambitious to take up such a grand and sweeping topic in such a short video. Thanks doing the reading and research and democratizing this knowledge! It leaves out significant impacts of technical innovations in shipping, roads (trade), printing (information propagation) and gunpowder (warfare). But the insights about the Catholic Church’s role in “western” culture’s shift from brittle tribal social power structures to ones held by resilient super national ideologies, by means of land accumulation, is very eye opening!

[@Alim-od2uz]

Great topic and great video ❤. But near the end, you put the 3 Abrahamic religions together in being against tribal and kinship structures, which was wrong and against the rest of your video. One could even argue one of the main reasons that the enlightenment and move towards democracy has always been in a very hard struggle and prone to breakdown in the middle-east is precisely because Islam did preserve tribal structures unlike Christianity.

[@andrewbecker1013]

Right - Islam was more of a conservative reaction against Christianity and its anti-tribal influences.

[@Alim-od2uz]

@@andrewbecker1013 not necessarily. They were evolved separately in different conditions for different purposes. Tribal structure was the default mode of a society. You would want to break that only if you have a specific reason to do so.

[@shaan4308]

Islam doesn't preserve tribal structures very well. Other than Arabs and Afghans I can't think of any other Islamic culture where tribal structure has been preserved.

[@aimandaniel8705]

@@shaan4308 Somalis

[@swampdweller6157]

@@shaan4308 pretty much every islamic society has an intensely kinship based hierarchy

[@nobodysanything2330]

I am delighted at the prospect of you expanding your own politihistorical kinship group - it is excellent that there is a whole community of creators capable of creating with this level of quality. Looking forward to it!

[@pitstop_pug9311]

>wake up >new kraut video >happy

[@VoteOmnivore]

11:00 christianity does not approve of claiming your a direct descendent of a god, but DOES approve of certain families saying they are more CHOSEN by God then others

[@vitorluigi2911]

So glad you made a collab with Ravignon, it was like a super mega crossover

[@vratislavgoldie7386]

Well after seeing the video i have a question that arise, was it "Christianity" which destroyed tribal families and kinship or was it the 'christian institution' also know as latin papacy? Because if abrahamic religion was the cause of all this why isnt that greeks or muslims or anyone without a proper "religious" institution did not manage to break their kinship ties. I believe its because of this particular innovation of the latin roman church which helped it bring this about this change.

[@1Kaisermerlin]

This video fails hard on generalisations, it fails to actually argue it's points in the separation of concepts. It would have been more effective to focus on a more specific example than the general area of europe, which creates major conflict in the narrative.

[@assyrianchristian764]

Though I disagree with the title as it’s should have been more the clan structure rather then tribal family, the video and information is well put out and explain. Some additional information I would like to add is that a light clan structure does exist among more eastern Christian (like the Assyrian, Armenian, Coptic and Ethiopians Christians) as you said earlier with the orthodox Christians

[@enrico7474]

Ethiopians abandoned clans a long time ago, even linguistic and tribal groups were nonexistent for a time until the abyssinians(ethiosemitic speakers who basically invented civilization in the region) found them selfs to be severely outnumbered ,so they started assimilating various tribal groups(mostly cushitic)which resulted insome abyssinians absorbing certain element the others didnt, it started out as subtle differences which kept growing until they developed dilaects then languages then completely seperate identities (within the larger abyssinian identitiy which was only a symoblic at that point)held together by those languages, they have no clans or family/sir names because all of that went extinct early on, after they started reestablishing tribal/linguistic groups(who again only identify each other by language and nothing else) they were unable to bring back those clan or old tribal family structures.

[@enrico7474]

Unsurprisingly Ethiopia was under the same situation as europe was ,a state/identity completely surrounded by hostile neighbors, further supporting the videos hypothesis the muslim abyssinian groups(who were under less pressure) abandoned clans much much later than the Christian abyssinians due to Christian influences in somecases.

[@FreyaEinde]

I would say the issue is how often in sociology and history that the terms clans and tribes are used interchangeably and have a certain classification bias depending on the culture being discussed usually from an outsider misconception on the complexity and relational range between tribes and clans.

[@lebendigesgespenst7669]

That’s so funny and awesome that Ravignon is in this video. I friend initially introduced me to his channel as a recommendation as a sort of second Kraut

[@Mark-nn2ce]

This was very good. I'm looking forward to your future collaborations. I know I found Brietannia's channel through yours and I have been very impressed.

[@slagmaxxing]

Great as always & great to see Ravignon in this. The video flowed seamlessly & wrapped up nicely. Was one of your (or both of yours) best videos to date x

[@senornaranja9842]

41

[@PakBallandSami]

i agree and your videos are great as well

[@BadgerOfTheSea]

@@senornaranja9842 Yes, 41%, thanks to bigots like you

[@sebastianbass2219]

Fish and chips are a disgusting British forgery of American catfish and fries.

[@banks9468]

How did you make a comment two days before the video was released?

[@Lobanjolom]

When Marx and Engels defined primitive communism, they did not say it was egalitarian, that is a misunderstanding of the dielectric.

[@judgemoses9015]

Commie here. We're not gone. We are just learning from our mistakes and this is a lovely contribution to the cause, comrade.

[@kamilp1567]

Great as always, glad to see you back with new video so quickly!

[@mattyl8995]

As a Marxist I respect the research of Kraut’s work. I think he uses a crude notion of Marxism that isn’t accurate to the ideology. Few Marxists these days would argue religion is entirely a tool of class oppression, nor that class can entirely dominate culture. I’d say that the tribal family was abondomed in Europe in part bc of Christianity, and in part bc it was not, materially speaking, useful anymore to the shifting realities of the late Roman Empire.

[@luxvult5202]

Marxists these days are as divided as feminists. There not a single school of thought, and Marxism is kinda dead outside of Academia.

[@BLooDCoMPleX]

He has too great of a hate boner for Marxism which seeps into his work. He's a good historian but a bad ideologue.

[@Nico-Tine]

Marx himself did not argue religion is entirely a tool of class oppression. The whole "religion is the opium of the masses" is not an argument of religion being a sort of sedative or means to oppress the working class. The next line after the opium mention, "Religion is the opium of the people. It is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of our soulless conditions.” The goal, then, is to sublate (aufheben) or overcome the oppression.

[@MrFuckingKololo]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 did you watch the whole video? Because Kraut adressed this point about isolated places like Scotland and balkan mountains.

[@MrFuckingKololo]

@@WHATISPOLITICS69 feudalism didn't develop as an economical system that then destroyed the old "clan" family system in Europe. Christianity dismantled the old family system in Roman Empire, which after it's collapse left people there without the protection previously offered by the clan, so when the muslim, Nordic and Hungarian attacks became an existential threat people went into servitude of various local warlords in exchange for protection, leading to the establishment of European aristocratic lines and feudalism. And then those aristocrats brought feudalism and dismantling of clan system to isolated places where that process didn't happen naturally. It's not that feudalism destroyed the clan system all over the world, rather Christianity destroyed clan system in Western Europe, which led to establishment of feudalism, which then spread through the rest of Europe and later America's, and destroyed clan system there. It's also funny how the only way this video would be wrong if you know anthropology is if you only know cultural materialism lmao. When the whole point of the video was how cultural materialism looked at history through the lense of it's sociopolitical agenda and has since been proven wrobg.

[@meneither3834]

This forces a few question. Why didn't Islamic civlisation turn out the same way Christianity did, was the Roman Catholic church the only difference ? Islam does also hold as truth that all are equal under God after all. What does the break up of the nuclear family entails for western societies ?

[@endou5308]

Islam does not hold that all are equal under Allah. Islam preaches that Jews and Christians are to be second class citizens and actually encourages slaughter of Jews.

[@dallinwalters6836]

Incredible video! Even when I disagree with your points you always make such great videos and this one is no exception, keep up the fantastic work!

[@chenqin415]

Did I miss something in the video's chain of argument? 1) Tribal family came into conflict with Christianity because tribes claim to be descendant of gods and Christianity believe that everyone has a divine spark. 2) After Rome collapse, the people of Europe sought the protection of lords giving rise to feudalism. 3) Lords give money/land/power to the Church to appease their people 4) .... Therefore tribal family died? Maybe I am ignorant, but the argument that the Church will get rid of tribal families because "descendant of gods" sound very dubious to me. Tribal families trace their lineage back to prominent figures who establish a family, not necessary a god. For tribal families that doesn't claim descendant from god, why can't it coexist with Christianity? In fact, from what I understand, in Philippines where Christianity is strong, extended families are still the norm. (I am not a Filipino so I might be wrong here) The argument that the people of Europe sought the protection of lords giving rise to feudalism also feel fishy to me. In China, whose history I am more proficient with, tribal families band together, even to the point of building forts to repel bandits. (In Water Margin, one of China's classic works, the bandits main opponent for the majority of the time is not the imperial government's military but the militias of tribal families) Every emperor of China (except for Ming dynasty) was able to claim the throne because they are backed by powerful tribal families. Thus it sound like the tribal family had already been destroyed even before the raise of the church and as a result, the people had to rely on a lord instead. For a video whose title is "How Christianity Destroyed the Tribal Family" I finished with more questions than answers. Maybe less bashing Marxism and more explaining?

[@gustavchambert7072]

It is simply not true that kinship societies almost never trace lineage through mothers. Matrilineal societies, where kinship is primarily or exclusively traced through the mother, are absolutely a thing,

[@thetechguychannel]

Kraut and Ravignon, dudes..... I really appreciate how you portrayed religion and political structures in general here. It was clinical and had none of the bias I usually find in videos discussing this topic. I hope you know how big of a thing it is you just did. Though if I may humbly suggest something, I'd like to see more about the Muslim clan structure and how that superceded the tribal family structures in Arabia. That's a more difficult rabbit hole to go down (a lot of sources are in Arabic) but if you want I can ask a friend who knows the language and history very well to work with you. I'm sure he'll be happy to do this without any strings attached after I show him this video. Sadly I think both Muslim clan structures and Jewish families are not well understood or often discussed. This could be a great opportunity to add another video that touches base more on these things, as the political institutions and legal structures in the Arabic world and Israel are largely influenced by these evolutions. It could also be a good opportunity to talk about how Islam was subverted, and how it changed from the days of the Umayyad caliph to modern-day Wahabbism.

[@Moondog911]

I was litterally thinking about this recently trying to consolidate my thoughts on it. This video was such a nice wrap on that idea. Loved IT!

[@mrfoozy47]

One thing to keep in mind when considering that quote “religion is the opium of the people” is that the way we think of opium today and the way it was thought of in Marx’s historical context aren’t the same. So from a modern perspective, comparing religion to opium might seem dismissive or even offensive, at the time Marx was writing, people genuinely thought of opium as having many legitimate applications. When you consider that the best medical experts were using opium to treat pretty much everything, the quote becomes a lot less edgy-Reddit-atheist sounding

[@vilo8492]

That part at the end abt partial structures was really insightful, I wish more ppl would look at the world that way.

[@Krunschy]

I feel like many of christianitys rules are commonly explained only with reasoning based in faith or tradition and I reckon that's why they don't resonate as well with people today. But seeing how they came to be and what impact they had historically, really makes you reevaluate them. So props for the great video. History is at its absolute best, when it's presented in a way that allows you to understand todays world better and you nailed it once more.

[@dogetaxes8893]

Yea a lot of people are quick to discard the wisdom of the past and look at religions as a bunch of idiots who believe in a sky daddy. This is despite I’ve never meant someone with that take whose actually even read a religious text or knows any pre-modern history.

[@tonydai782]

@@dogetaxes8893 This is why I view religion as important for a society to have, even though it might not be entirely logical.

[@user-cx9nc4pj8w]

@@tonydai782 You realise you can take the wisdom of religion without the belief in the sky daddy right?

[@chico9805]

@@user-cx9nc4pj8w No, you cannot. The wisdom and basic premise of religion is worthless, without the omniscient authority of God to enforce it. For example, of what worth is morality when there's no God to determine its parameters? That task would be left to us, and as history has shown endlessly, humanity is cruelty and cruelty is humanity.

[@mastegoh7139]

@@chico9805 what if god decided that you should kill gay people, would you be fine with a gay genocide, because god said so?

[@000Dragon50000]

I do think this video conflates patriarchal dominance of society with older and more interconnected family structures in a really weird and warped way.

[@leonartu3756]

I really didnt expect you to make another video so quickly

[@GreenTimeEagle]

I'm going back to ancestor worship, the original way of connecting oneself to the Creator through the inseperable ties from ascendant to descendant. In China, He is known as the Great Heavenly Ancestor. I've almost finished my ancestors altar. It's a nice little box with doors that open, a gilded backboard and some steps inside. Once connected spiritually, I will offer small amounts of food and drink, at least once daily, which my ancestors who have gone to the astral world (died; the next life) will be able to absorb the spiritual essence of food through the gold lettering on the main tablet, written on a black tablet: "Middleton Family Ancestors".

[@trespassa90]

Thank you Kraut and Ravignon for the amazing work! Ravignon, I'm eagerly waiting for part 3 of your Quebec series! First 2 were very informative and amazing! I think I misunderstood something that was stated at @20:06, specifically ".. Abrahamic religions in general are, as a political institution, inherently self-destructive since the social forces they unleash through the destruction of kinship and tribal structures...." Isn't the premise that muslim invasions (along with Hungarian and viking invasions) was a big factor in the the development of European Feudalism? I'm not sure how Islam contributed to the destruction of kinship and tribal structure in this context, or we may have seen the nuclear family structure persist in Islamic countries and in countries under the Islamic sphere of influence (like with Greek w.r.t Ottoman Empire). Maybe I've misunderstood something, so thought I'd ask - Thank you!

[@andreachiarello9001]

Dear Mr. Kraut, I find your sources juicy and consistent. I will recommend and spread this video. Please keep on the good and saucy sources.

[@stormelemental13]

I appreciate you acknowledging that people do things because they believe in them. People didn't become missionaries to the pagans because of some materialistic self-interest. They believed they had a sacred duty to save souls. Cyrus the Great didn't sponsor the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem because it was good for the treasury. There was no great benefit to be gained by it politically. He believed in the gods of his empire. He believe honoring them would bring prosperity to his realm, and that it was the right thing to do.. Materialists consistently fail to understand why religious people do what they do. Both in the broad sweep of history and the lives to individuals. You can disagree with believers. You can think their beliefs are false. But unless you can provide conceptual space for the idea that people might sincerely believe what they say they believe, you will never understand why Marie Kondo thanks a home when entering it, a victim's family will forgive a murderer, or why a gurdwara provides food.

[@harelkalifa2451]

Why didn't Jewish and Muslim societies evolve in the same way (and if they did then why are they still different than the western European society?)? Also, when did this change start from? I'm Jewish, and Judaism does have a lot of what you mentioned: divorces are considered a very bad thing from the start, polygamy was nearly extinct already in the classical age, women (especially widows) could and did inherit property, the idea of personal success, as in one can advance by being personally successful regardless of where he came from, existed in the times of the hasmonean kingdom, and the rule of law existed even before that. But despite that you still have a lot of things which might contradict this- priestly families still exist to this day (though not even close to what they were in the past), marriages are still a family affair, dynasties of rabbis are very common etc.

[@CG-yq2xy]

Hmmmm. This one is a complex question indeed. I'm neither Jewish or Muslim so there might be inconsistencies in my answer. For the Jews, I think that it was because up until VERY recently, they were a second class citizen in countries/empires that at best would accept them as a means of tax revenue or at worst persecute them to no end. In most of Western Europe, Jews were not allowed to own tracts of land, couldn't bear arms for whatever reason, needed permission from the local ruler to move both within and to/away from the city. Thus, these Jewish communities had to either convert and integrate, or double down or family and community structures to survive. Any wealth that they built up in the allowed trades they could do, had to be closely guarded and regulated via marriages and partnerships in said community, due to the fact that it can be lost in an instant. Then there's also the parameter that there's no one "Jew/Jews", you have the Sephardic Jews, Ashkenazi Jews and lesser known groups such as the Ethiopian Jews and Romaniote Jews with different worldviews and customs. I think that only recently, with the establishment of the Israeli State, we might see a uniform change as noted in the video due to the Jews that live there having a say about their lives and customs. The Islamic world is even trickier. They emerged from the Arab tribesmen, which means that a lot of the tribal legal procedures were carried on the tribal level. But then it gets weird because their first Caliphates had to rely on many of the bureaucrats of the Sassanian/Eastern Roman territories to at least keep the jizia tax revenue going. This means that they were in contact with people who were more connected with antiquity than the Western Europeans and thus fueled the Islamic Golden Age. So as long as the tax kept flowing and the people of the book submitted, there was no reason to dissolve the old structures. Hence why in the Gulf countries you get the heavy tribal influence, while in the Levant region (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan), you see more of a kinship as noted by Kraut's jab with the Greeks. I'm sure I'm missing out a lot but eh, I don't want to make a doctoral dissertation.

[@harelkalifa2451]

@@CG-yq2xy thanks! In regards to the Jewish social order, this makes sense, though I'm interested in what was it like before the exile. In the hasmonean kingdom of Israel you had on the one hand a lot of tribalism, especially in the priesthood, while you also had the rise of rabbis who were appointed by merit alone (Hilel the Elder and rabbi Akiva are probably the most extreme cases, one being a migrant from Babylonia, and the other a poor shepherd). So clearly the idea of "all are equal before G-d" Existed in Judaism before Christianity existed, so is that to mean that Christianity simply radicalized the anti tribalism parts of Judaism? And if yes, than where and how did Judaism create this notion?

[@CG-yq2xy]

@@harelkalifa2451 That is a subject that's beyond me 😅. I know little of the Jewish structure prior to the sacking of Jerusalem and the great diaspora from a purely historical point of view. I do think however that any of these societal norms were destroyed or severely disturbed by the previous factors that I noted. Still, would make a great doctoral dissertation I suppose.

[@Carlos-ln8fd]

Amazing video as always. Thank you so much for your hard work. The conclusion reminds me of an interview I saw with new testament historian Bart Erhman recently where he talked about how science and history can only advance once they are separated from ideologies that limit you. He was talking specifically about religion, but obviously the same is true of political ideology. Marx's evaluation of history as exposed in his writings is very poor historical anaylisis that brings all sorts of misunderstandings for these reasons.

[@d-damianos]

I discovered this channel few days ago, and I'm ASTONISHED by the quality, the quantity and the topics of your videos! Its just great, thank you for existing!

[@chaostrottel_hdaufdutube8144]

Hi I’m a Marxist-Leninist and I’m of cause quite a fan of the materialist conception of history. I find the points that you made quite interesting and found myself being reminded about a discussion I had with a history teacher of mine who argued that Marxist were often miss representing the role of the nation/nationalism (i. e. nationalism similarly to religion just being a tool of the bourgeois too unite the classes behind their national competition). Since your main evidence that religion is more than the Marxist conception of it is that it formed the nuclear family in Europe, I wondered which other materialist explanation of the nuclear family and I remembered once reading a summary of Silvia Federicis „Caliban and the Witch“ where she argues that the breaking up of the communal family’s (and modes of production) began a long time before the industrial revolution just like you do. I‘m sorry that I can’t recall the exact argument she made but I think it went something like this: The key to breaking the communal family and it’s subsistence farming was the capitalist patriarchy meaning the separation of men and women into the productive and the reproductive spheres of work which really took up pace with the witch hunts (which of cause a religious) but existed before in lesser ways and after. Also even though the witch hunts are religious the still seem to serving the bourgeois in this example. I think it’s important to see Marxism as more than what Marx and Engels wrote, hence their methods and ideas are in continuous development.

[@pauls6425]

Capitalism didnt really exists until the modern period, so it's not it that broke the communal family unit. I disagree with Kraut that it was early Christianity. I would argue it wad the Black Death and the gradually collapse of Feudalism. Marx was quite clear on what Capitalism is as he based so much of his stuff from Adam Smith and Hegel.

[@anthonyle1838]

On which hunts specifically it was more hysteria and trying to kill your neighbor for their property generally in very hyper Protestantism religious communities like the Quakers organize Catholic religion were generally suspicious of witchcraft accusations. the capitalist system it's more based in protestism than organize catholics because well they had some communal parts of their ideology you see this in monk groups and some early church thinkers

[@Hjernespreng]

A lot of this sounds good, but many of the institutions described as unique to western Christianity existed BEFORE it, like women's right to property, work and divorce in norse culture. And even with the change of norms brought by Christianity, feudalism in Scandinavia never actually manifested in the way it did in much of the rest of Europe.

[@andrewabatielos]

In most urban-suburban and some rural areas in Greece dating is no longer a "communal contract" with the family. Most of Greece no longer exercises this tradition, it is prelavent only in small villages. But, as far as I know, many Greeks that for generations do not live in Greece, have maintained this practice. Generally, Greeks who have been living outside Greece try to conserve traditions with zeal and that is why a lot of them are nationalists and hyperreligious. Maybe this old-fashioned way of life that Greek families outside of Greece maintain is the reason you have this impression. But, as I said above, most of Greece no longer practices this tradition.

[@crazydinosaur8945]

a bit like when people in the US think that the traditions they have preserved from wherever there great great great grandpa was from, is representative of the culture there now

[@hunter704]

KZbin casually not recommending a new video from a channel where I have seen every video multiple times How is THIS website, THE place

[@ericc9321]

Oh boy, kinship structures! We're into that REAL ANTHROPOLOGIST SHIT now! The most important thing I want to note is that you're depicting tribal societies as a monolith. Tribal societies have had as much variety as more 'civilized' societies throughout history, and many of them are what those in the 'biz' (anthropology nerds) call uxorilocal or matrilocal residence cultures, where the married family lives with the parents of the wife rather than the parents of the husband. This often (but not always) indicates a more matriarchal society based around the same kind of extended clan structure that you describe here. This is especially common in agricultural tribes because the woman's labor in an agricultural setting is actually incredibly valuable, often more so than then man's. This can get even more silly when you have all of the aforementioned traits and polygamy coexisting, like in the case of ancient Japan, where often a man would marry multiple women and travel between their houses and be a part of multiple clans. This sounds completely insane, but it was more simple than one would think because the children born to the various wives were all part of that wife's family. However in the context of this video's discussion on European family structures SPECIFICALLY the assumption that all tribes are patriarchal doesn't interfere with video's thesis as almost all European family structures are descended from highly patriarchal Semitic and Indo-European tribes.

[@Binstone]

On one hand, I agree, but I think the rise capitalism killed the final tribal relationship, the feudal arristocricy. Like you mention the lack of caring for the nobility families during the fall of the roman empire, and then only caring again during the end of the dark ages, but they started to care again right? specifically with the monarchs who saved them from the raiders? It seems to me that capitalism has finally destroyed the last bit of that. In fact now, if a politician gives a job to their child, it's called nepotism, and the people largely don't like it (though it happens by in large). In feudal times, I believe this was cared. Now that i think about it, catholicism didn't destroy the tribal unit. It just destroyed the tribal unit in the underclass.

[@ArchmageIlmryn]

I would say that there's also a step between a tribal, clan-like family and the nuclear family - one does not go directly from the former to the latter. Multigenerational families sticking together were still common in Europe until the industrial revolution, even if they no longer formed clan networks.

[@xenoblad]

idk about that nepotism part. If the partisanship of the public is strong enough, they can overlook nepotism if they REALLY like the politician. Virtually no conservative complained about Trump placing unqualified family members in government roles.

[@Binstone]

@@xenoblad yeah, but currently, we might be going backwards to a more feudal mind, especially when it comes to Trump. Just in general, people think the word nepotism is bad, and not the IDEAL GOVERNMENT. Atleast in my experience, they may ignore it when their side does, and both do, though one is more brazen, but it's a sin, not a virtue. And we don't think of blood lines being holy anymore. Success is supposed to be due to hard work, virtue, etc, and not who you know, and who you are related to..

[@DocFumeur]

Thanks for the video Kraut. Not watched it yet, I feel like it's kind of ambitious to sum up such a complex question in 15 minutes, but I'm curious to hear your point on that

[@grzegorzbrzeczyszczykiewic3918]

That part about dating greeks women was just false. It used to be like that in the 60s but not in modern Greece. Although it is true Greece is more kinship oriented than in Western Europe as I have noticed that I have a closer relation to my 1st and 2nd cousins than my German friends.

[@shittymcrvids3119]

I think that shows the clash between the historical kinship of Greece and the modern integration into largely non-tribal Europe through institutions and trade. Very interesting.

[@aaronfield7899]

If feudalism is created by Christianity, then how did Japan become feudal?

[@erikharaldsson2416]

When my grandparents bought the farm from my grandmother's parents in the late 1940s, then they still signed a contract specifying what kind of food and how much of it that they had to provide to the parents in return.

[@davidmizak4642]

The remarkable information you provide to your viewers needs to be applauded. I sincerely appreciate your effort to expand your viewers knowledge. A sincere thank you!

[@BookofProverbs]

This video is lacking and fraught with opinion

[@J_GamerSP]

Really interesting to see multiple people narrating the video!

[@haroldhamburgler]

19:32 "Law developed (in Abrahamic Societies) through religious institutions as an impartial arbiter of justice." Secular and ecclesiastic law were separate professions, as far as I am aware, for all of the medieval period in Europe. You seem to be claiming that both types of law developed out of earlier ecclesiastic law. What is the evidence that secular law developed out of ecclesiastic law? Further in what sense was medieval secular law impartial arbiter or justice for all? Up until the trial of king Charles, it was widely understood, at least in England, that there was no secular law under which a king could commit a crime. There were limitation on the powers of some kings through constitutions, but they were all clearly exempt from criminal prosecution.

[@bobmarly6938]

I have a great deal of respect for Krauts videos, however I am greatly skeptical of this one and hope that viewers do some additional research. I don't know enough to argue the fundamental premise was right or wrong, but there are several key points which I feel go against this videos theses. 1. The rise of Fuedalism has its roots in the fall of the Romen empire. Even by the 3rd century the Roman borders stopped being well defined and protection became the prerogative of local cities instead of the army. Around this time employment, including tenent farming, became a hereditary institution. By the time of Constintine Rome was a caste based, Christian society where the local castle and "lord" had a significant degree of power and autonomy. 2. This video seems to suggest there was a gradual emancipation of Women within Western Europe that occurred due to the destruction of the tribal system. From what I understand, the legal rights and material conditions of women has varied CONSIDERABLY across Europe. While there were certainly uniform unfluences brought about by Christianity, it would be difficult to describe the conditions of "Western European" women except in individual countries. 3. The were still significant aspects of Tribal arrangements present within European society far beyond the 11th century. The structure of Lordship was entirely based off of extended family and inheritance, and the family of presents was by no means "nuclear". Even by the 18th century most presents were living in small towns where extended family structures were used to support themselves, arranged marriages and bride prices were common, and the patriarch of the family has a significant degree of influence. It seems to me that this video exaggerates the destruction of Christianity. Even if the church played a part in eroding tribal systems, they certainly weren't destroyed. Additionally, the video only focuses on Catholicism. The immense power of the Papacy is an explanation for why tribal systems broke down, however they explanation wouldn't work for Islam, Judaism, Eastern Orthedox, ect. Maybe with a longer video these questions would be covered more. If anyone could help me understand better that would be greatly appreciated.

[@Kraut_the_Parrot]

1. I promise to read and look more into this, sounds very interesting. 2. No. Nonononono. I do not suggest that women were emancipated. Please don't confuse that- 3: There is a comment by someone I highlighted beneath which adresses these points very well. I'll copy paste it: It is worth noting that Southern Italy was held by the Byzantine Greeks and the Arabs for several hundred years past the establishment of feudal and republican states in Northern Italy. Southern Italy only became Latinized after the Norman conquest in the 1060's, a process that would take several hundred years. Muslims and followers of the Greek rite would make up a majority in most areas well into the 1200s. Greeks would remain a significant minority into the 1500s. This left a cultural impact, drawing Southern Italy half into the sphere of the Eastern cultural tradition. Basically Southern Italy has followed the Western tradition for ~400 years less than Northern Italy. His statement on the Scots is very similar to Southern Italy, feudalism only being introduced to those respective places by conquering outsiders, giving them more of a clan-like culture. I would make the same argument of Spain, where Muslims dominated into the 1100s, only finally being pushed out in 1492. Kraut's point on the large influence of the Catholic Church in breaking the clan-system holds true even if it did not succeed in doing so universally. Catholicism was present in Friesland and Scotland, though those places remained more tribal due to other factors like isolation and harsh terrain. This can be true while simultaneously seeing much evidence of his hypothesis in the historiography on a larger scale in the vast majority of Europe. Sure, urbanization may have played a part, but to blind ourselves to what clearly already occurred without urbanization builds a weak narrative. Additionally, if urbanization alone causes this phenomena so fast, then we would see it in the urbanized Middle East.

[@otisonyme9649]

Christianity does not explain entirely the fall of the tribal family as the most current community driven families in the West are Christian. The lack of resources and space, as well as relocation to cities resulting from industrialisation played a far greater role as with limited family sizes and slowly but surely patriarchal connections were lost.

[@Walterdecarvalh0100]

Yes it does, and you're clearly speaking out of your ass with no knowledge on the matter? How do I know this? Because in 800 cousin marriages were made illegal, you know, the one thing necessary for tribal families.

[@genghiskhan5701]

Its annoying how people confuse community driven families with tribal families. Yes, the families are active in their communities since humans are social but they don't have exclusive customs or taboos or code that governs them exclusively and individuals can still do their own thing

[@glendamendoza6601]

@@genghiskhan5701 How big does a family need to be in order to be called a tribal community society?

[@mastegoh7139]

@@genghiskhan5701 "no true tribal family"

[@eingrobernerzustand3741]

God, I've been looking for sources in regard to this topic for two years now, ever since I first heard about the Catholics churchs social engineering. Thank you so much for this video.

[@algovoice]

An interesting thing about Greek family structure is how normal it is regarded! When you go in a village and you meet a stranger, they will first ask you your name and surname, and right after this question "ποιανού είσαι συ;", meaning "whose are you?". That "who" refers to your father, mother, grandfather, grandmother ect.

[@Nemerian]

Literally same expression in Romania.