ABSTRACT
New Guinea represents a place where an effective moral community has yet to evolve. Within each diminutive group, there are rules of behavior, but most do not carry very far. By the thirteenth century, its multitude of feudal hamlets were being knit together into an extended moral community. A well-disciplined moral community exercised its might against a dissenting minority. The primary function of morality seems to be to control social conflicts. Based upon this supposition, morality seems to provide protection from the excesses of hierarchy, role negotiations, and intimacy. Christopher Boehm, a primatologist, suggests that this is the principal source of morality. In the creation and enforcement of moral rules, they regularly mete out pain. The negotiation of moral standards can be ruthless, as can the sanctions for disrespecting them. Moral negotiations, like the other social negotiations we have examined, have peculiarities.
