This is the first of four posts about experiments in direct democracy, where ordinary people assume responsibility for running society. The first, over 4,000 years old, is a recorded account of early Frisian society prior to the Roman conquest of Gaul in 52 BC. Imperial Rome dismissed the Frisians and other Germanic tribes as barbarians for the same reason Europeans dismissed Native Americans as savages: because they owned the land communally and rejected authoritarian governance.