ABSTRACT
This chapter employs interdisciplinary insights from anthropology, culture and sociology in order to establish the 'essence' of diplomacy. To understand diplomacy is to first consider its relationship with politics and the concept of the government. Anthropology and rock art shed new light on the diplomatic embryology of human beings, the groups they formed and the relations between those groups. Traditional diplomacy can be further understood by thinking of it in terms of rules, people, buildings and duality. One treaty is of particular relevance to the rules governing traditional diplomacy: The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (VCDR). Traditional diplomacy is a large, extremely sophisticated system that manages the relations between 192 diverse, estranged states. Without diplomacy, there would be no relations between disparate groups, only estrangement, war, conflict, division, disunity, extremism, xenophobia and, as a result, mutual extermination.
