4 ms·
You’re only half-right. It’s true that hunter-gatherer societies are traditionally much egalitarian than agricultural ones, but this does not apply to pastoral
by Analemma_ 8y ago
You’re only half-right. It’s true that hunter-gatherer societies are traditionally much egalitarian than agricultural ones, but this does not apply to pastoral nomads, which is what the Bakhtiari, and other well-known nomads like the Bedouin, are. Nomads and hunter-gatherers aren’t the same thing and their societies look pretty different: nomads are about as patriarchal as you’d expect of traditional tribes.
- manfredo 8y agoEven saying that hunter gatherer societies were more egalitarian is only somewhat right. They were egalitarian in term of wealth, but that's vacuously true because such societies don't have any wealth in the traditional sense. However things like status and access to reproductive opportunities were very non-egalitarian. I recall reading studies that found that only about 40% of men in hunter gatherer societies produced descendants (due to widespread polygamy that increased reproductive opportunities to a select few men, while depriving it of many others), as compared to 70-80% in agriculturalist societies. Inequalities do exists, it just manifests itself differently because these societies don't have wealth in the way we usually recognize it.