These are good hypotheses, but I personally don't think either of them explains very well why humans value hierarchies. Ad 1, when there is no central "brain",

These are good hypotheses, but I personally don't think either of them explains very well why humans value hierarchies. Ad 1, when there is no central "brain", and decisions are more distributed, a single hierarchy often hinders communication. (There are for example studies that show that the biggest communication barrier in SW teams is not a physical distance, but a managerial one.) It seems when people work in a distributed way they tend to communicate in many different ad hoc groups, as needed. Ad 2, there is indeed some evidence that more centralized societies are less violent. But it's not clear whether this is because of the hierarchy, or because of the concentration of power. On the other hand, it seems that the societies with multiple different hierarchies like democracies are in fact often less violent than more authoritarian societies. It seems to me if this hypothesis was true, we would see much more formalized ways how the hierarchies are changed, but I think we don't, rebellions are often a very messy business. Perhaps it can be accepted as an explanation why there are trade wars instead of wars, but as the answer to the original question, it IMHO still leaves something to be desired. In any case, I think there are many good explanations for hierarchies. > aren't you by chance JS1 from abclinuxu Excellent guess! ;-)