Drawing on the author's extensive field research along the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Xizang plateau,this article explores the defining features of"primordial communities"in Qiang and Zang villages during the first half of the 20th century,along with the corresponding memory of"history of brethren ancestors".The article further discusses how the author,in an ongoing study,utilizes the concept of the primordial community to investigate the origins of global human civilizations and traces of primordial communities and ancestral histories in the civilizational era.Specifically,it examines how purely kinship-based communities and the memory of"heroic ancestor histories"enabled certain groups to emerge as the ruling families that shaped civilizations,transforming broader primordial communities into rural villages and their members into peasants.Ultimately,the article emphasizes the importance of reflexive thinking on civilization from a human-ecological perspective,aiming at shift the focus from the material and spiritual achievements of civilization's elite to a concern for the rural communities and peasants who occupy the lower strata of this human ecological system.
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