The purpose of this proposal is to remind archaeologists and others that such past groups are not just collections of traits identified over geographic areas or spans of time but were once living and vibrant societies, each with a unique culture that deserves to be included in our understanding of the human experience. | Journal of Anthropology and Archaeology June 2017, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 17-19 ISSN 2334-2420 (Print) 2334-2439 (Online) Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved. Published by American Research Institute for Policy Development DOI: URL: Voices from the Past: Conceptualizing a “Fifth World” Mark Q. Sutton1 Introduction There are thousands of extant indigenous societies in the world today whose voices are faint, garbled, and too often suppressed. These societies are seen as constituting a “Fourth World,” generally small separate societies living within the boundaries of larger contemporary states. A similar situation exists for the uncounted tens of thousands of past societies, most of whom had small populations about which we know little to nothing. Here it is proposed that these past societies constitute a “Fifth World,” defined as groups that remain undiscovered or unrecognized and so have virtually no voice in the contemporary world, or in a best case scenario, whose voices can only be discerned as indistinct and distant echoes. The purpose of this proposal is to remind archaeologists and others that such past groups are not just collections of traits identified over geographic areas or spans of time but were once living and vibrant societies, each with a unique culture that deserves to be included in our understanding of the human experience. The Fourth World Contemporary nation-states are loosely divided into “worlds,” terms developed during the Cold War. The “First World” is that of developed western democracies; the “Second World” is (was) that of the Communist bloc; and the “Third World” was (is) that of poor developing countries unaligned with the first two, now commonly called the developing world. The “Fourth World” consists of indigenous people and societies living within larger nationstates, such as Native people in the United States and Aboriginal people in Australia (Neeley 2017; also see .
