Before There Were Badges

Back in the days when there were only about twelve people in the world, identification was no big deal; you knew everyone, and everyone knew you. For millions of years, as humanity progressed toward that pinnacle of refinement we call Homo sapiens, social groups remained small and tight-knit. It was easy to see who was in charge and who wasn't. If you were Big Hairy or Clever Chaka, you probably had a place at the top of the ladder; if you were the Stone Age equivalent of Casper Milquetoast, you were lucky to have a place by the fire.

But as humans refined the one thing that set them apart from other animals -- culture -- they kept finding ways of putting off that most inevitable of the inevitable, Death (taxes came later). Eventually there came a time when people were able to make more than enough babies to replace them before they died, and with more people living longer, a few clever souls were able to find ways to feed those extra mouths, and naturally that just spurred everyone to make more babies.

As our ancestors continued to multiply, so did their problems. Suddenly it wasn't as easy to start a new community when the group got too big, because all the good spots were taken. Some especially tough folks decided to try the less inviting places anyway, and became the ancestors of people like the Bedouins, Eskimos, and New Jersey residents. But soon even those places got crowded, and people had to live in big groups whether they liked it or not, and suddenly it was harder and harder to know everyone, even in a moderate-sized community.

That meant that there were strangers in your midst that belonged there nonetheless, and some of them were not just bigger than you, they were demanding things of you that you didn't necessarily want to provide. How could you tell if they were the authorities, with the right to make those demands, or just thugs in bad clothes?

The answer was simple: badges.

On to part two :: The Secret Origins of Badges :: Back to Index