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simple chiefdoms and independent communities is the typical fortune of the
(complex) chiefdom (Earle 1991: 13). Thus, the megacommunity is a possible way
of transformation of the complex chiefdom; a “positive” way in the sense that it is
alternative to a complex chiefdom’s disintegration. So, evidently, the break-down
was the fortune of the majority of the 130 early Bini chiefdoms, and about ten
protocity settlements mentioned above, potential centers of complex chiefdoms,
like the Ogiso Benin one did not consolidate their power over neighbors and
degraded to the level of big villages. Sooner or later they were absorbed by Benin.
Only the Benin megacommunity of the 13–19 th centuries (for
correctness, in this case it should be said “the megacommunity political
institutions”) formed the real “center” that was “above” all the sociopolitical
components of the country and was able to establish really effective
suprachiefdom authorities. And just this became the decisive “argument” in the
competition of Benin with other “protocities” for the role of the all-Bini center.
Not occasionally Benin started dominating over them right after the submission
of the Uzama by Oba Ewedo, from the second half of the 13 th century (see
Bondarenko 1995a: 94–95). Due to the same reason the megacommunity
institutions, including the monarchy of the Oba dynasty and different categories
and associations of titled (megacommunity) chiefs were stable and sustained.
Just because of this we may argue that under the Obas one socio-political
system based on the extended family (that of the Ogisos period: autonomous
communities + chiefdoms ≈ complex chiefdom) was changed by another:
autonomous communities + chiefdoms = megacommunity. Having the same
number of complexity levels and socio-economic basis as the complex
chiefdom of the Ogiso time, the megacommunity surpassed it in economic
development, governmental apparatus’ elaborateness and effectiveness, the
degree of internal integrity and centralization. Furthermore, in territory, social
organization complexity, economic parameters, the governmental apparatus’
hierarchization, spiritual culture the Benin megacommunity, fundamentally
based on the kinship principle, was not inferior to many archaic states.
Features of the communalists’ thinking, consciousness,
Weltanschauung were adequate to the conditions of life in the megacommunity.
No doubt, this is not a co-incidence but a display of their interdependence that
the “objective” socio-political structure was paralleled by “subjective” Binis’
vision of the person and the world. The Binis believed that every person had
four soles that demonstrated different degrees of separateness from his or her
physical membrane (Bradbury 1973: 271–282). The universe was seen by
them as a hierarchically structured entity, also a system of four circles: the
human being – terrestrial space – the world of spirits and supreme deities – the
world on the whole. The community was perceived by the Binis as the sociocultural
focus of society and hence the core of the whole world’s core, as for
them their society literally was the hub of the universe. It turned out a model of
the universe (a system of circles) and its most important part in one and the