I just came across a paper that argued that pre-historic hunter-gatherers likely on average lived in less egalitarian societies than previously thought (though there was substantial variation).
Many researchers assume that until 10-12,000 years ago, humans lived in small, mobile, relatively egalitarian bands composed mostly of kin. This “nomadic-egalitarian model” informs evolutionary explanations of behavior and our understanding of how contemporary societies differ from those of our evolutionary past. Here, we synthesize research challenging this model and propose an alternative, the diverse histories model, to replace it. We outline the limitations of using recent foragers as models of Late Pleistocene societies and the considerable social variation among foragers commonly considered small-scale, mobile, and egalitarian. We review ethnographic and archaeological findings covering 34 world regions showing that non-agricultural peoples often live in groups that are more sedentary, unequal, large, politically stratified, and capable of large-scale cooperation and resource management than is normally assumed. These characteristics are not restricted to extant Holocene hunter-gatherers but, as suggested by archaeological findings from 27 Middle Stone Age sites, likely characterized societies throughout the Late Pleistocene(until c. 130 ka), if not earlier. These findings have implications for how we understand human psychological adaptations and the broad trajectory of human history.
Conversely, there’s a hypothesis that the Indus Valley Civilization was more egalitarian, unlike other Bronze Age civilizations in the Near East and China that were hierarchical. See: this Twitter thread (also by Manvir Singh) and this article (by Patrick Wyman).
That’s an interesting consideration.
I just came across a paper that argued that pre-historic hunter-gatherers likely on average lived in less egalitarian societies than previously thought (though there was substantial variation).
See also this Twitter thread and this Aeon article. I don’t know what the consensus of the field is, however.
Conversely, there’s a hypothesis that the Indus Valley Civilization was more egalitarian, unlike other Bronze Age civilizations in the Near East and China that were hierarchical. See: this Twitter thread (also by Manvir Singh) and this article (by Patrick Wyman).