3 ms·

Not sure if I understand you right, but neolithic villages were likely way, way more egalitarian than anything we have today. When you have no material wealth

by lukan 3y ago

Not sure if I understand you right, but neolithic villages were likely way, way more egalitarian than anything we have today. When you have no material wealth (as a status indicator) that can be passed on that divides people by birth and no formal power system, then the status will be the deeds of the people. And people are not that different on average. Inbreeding would be rather a strong motivation to get fresh blood and have regular festivals to achieve that. But trading, and general coordination and communication to fight of bigger threats were likely a strong motivator as well.

throwaway11460 3y ago
Neolithic communities had both a power and status system, as well as material wealth that couldn't be easily replicated and ensured one's place in society.
bazoom42 3y ago
Are you suggesting disparities in material wealth did not exist in neolithic times? Why would you think that?
- Retric 3y ago
  No, it’s suggesting the orders of magnitude were smaller. Bill gates has what 1 million times more wealth than the average person his age, more? There’s no way someone in a Neolithic village could get that kind of advantage over the average person in a neolithic village. Someone having 10x the productivity/wealth/etc sure, but 10,000x just isn’t on the table at least as considered by the time period. We place extreme value on gold where a shiny stone might be worth thousands of tons of food, but nobody back then would make such an exchange. Extreme wealth takes social structures to support it. People 2,000 years ago had less wealth than today on average but you could still have some guy with more concubines in their haram than existed in a Neolithic village.
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    The average person is very unlikely to meet somebody like Bill Gates. For most practical intents and purposes inequality is much smaller than that.
    - Retric 3y ago
      I suspect most Americas have seen someone with 100+ million dollars in assets at some point in their life. How many people have gone to a Miley Cyrus concert or professional sports etc? The indirect impact is even more profound, consider all the propaganda pushed by billionaires buying media etc.
      - lupusreal 3y ago
        They may have a few times, maybe. Far from a given. Now consider an average middle class American, who might afford Swift tickets, could have on the order of a million dollars net worth (albeit mostly illiquid, tied up in their property). That puts them two orders of magnitude off of Taylor Swift, the sort of person they might see a few times in their life. But it puts them six orders of magnitude above somebody who's flat broke on rock bottom, and they certainly meet that sort of person a lot more than they meet Taylor Swift. The inequality gap between a middle class person and somebody at rock bottom is wider much wider and more pervasive in society than the gap between a common middle class "millionaire" and the billionaires, but all nearly all the internet whining about inequality is focused on the billionaires. Now I grant you, comparing different amounts of zeros is kind of a silly way to think about inequality. Let's get a bit more real: the middle class and billionaires both take a lot for granted that somebody at rock bottom cannot. They both know where they're going to sleep tonight, both feel secure in the knowledge that they're going to have a roof over their heads, stomachs filled with food, medical needs met, etc. Somebody living on the streets has none of that, and that difference is I think far more profound than the difference between the middle class and billionaires. The middle class have to go to work and don't own megayachts or helicopters, but these are trivial matters that needn't worry them so much as somebody living on the street has to worry. Now what about Neolithic times? I think people at rock bottom still existed back then. People who were cast out from their group, due to disease or getting on the losing side of a power struggle, being a weirdo, or whatever the reason. There were probably people who got banished and probably died soon after. And I think there were probably people who were very popular, who were respected and loved by others, or maybe were feared. People who benefited from a strong social safety net, who got given food by others and were protected by others. The inequality gap between them and the banished would have been immense, just as the inequality gap between the homeless and middle class today is immense. If my assumptions about neolithic society are accurate, then it's absurd to say that neolithic society didn't have meaningful inequality because they didn't have billionaires.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
dmurray 3y ago
The article seems to be making the argument that - these "megasites" were bigger and more urban than your typical Neolithic village, and certainly than a typical group of nomads or hunter-gatherers. - normally, increased urbanisation like that would lead to increased levels of inequality, for the reasons you mention (you can acquire more material wealth through specialisation, and it's easier to accumulate it when you don't have to carry it with you) - but actually, from their analysis of floor plan sizes, there wasn't as much inequality as we might expect. It seems a little tenuous to me. I'd like to see their conclusions when you add on the error bars for "just how strongly family wealth correlates to house size", "how accurate is our distribution of house sizes given we only recovered X% of them" and all the other assumptions being made along the way.
pantalaimon 3y ago
festivals are also generally great fun and provide a welcome change from the otherwise often monotonous daily life :)
golergka 3y ago
Many Neolithic cultures had literal slavery, and they also have had very high levels of violence. There's nothing less egalitarian than owning another human being as a thing, as well as raping, killing and pillaging.

by lukan 3y ago

throwaway11460 3y ago

Neolithic communities had both a power and status system, as well as material wealth that couldn't be easily replicated and ensured one's place in society.

bazoom42 3y ago

Are you suggesting disparities in material wealth did not exist in neolithic times? Why would you think that?

Retric 3y ago
No, it’s suggesting the orders of magnitude were smaller. Bill gates has what 1 million times more wealth than the average person his age, more? There’s no way someone in a Neolithic village could get that kind of advantage over the average person in a neolithic village. Someone having 10x the productivity/wealth/etc sure, but 10,000x just isn’t on the table at least as considered by the time period. We place extreme value on gold where a shiny stone might be worth thousands of tons of food, but nobody back then would make such an exchange. Extreme wealth takes social structures to support it. People 2,000 years ago had less wealth than today on average but you could still have some guy with more concubines in their haram than existed in a Neolithic village.
- lupusreal 3y ago
  The average person is very unlikely to meet somebody like Bill Gates. For most practical intents and purposes inequality is much smaller than that.
  - Retric 3y ago
    I suspect most Americas have seen someone with 100+ million dollars in assets at some point in their life. How many people have gone to a Miley Cyrus concert or professional sports etc? The indirect impact is even more profound, consider all the propaganda pushed by billionaires buying media etc.
    - lupusreal 3y ago
      They may have a few times, maybe. Far from a given. Now consider an average middle class American, who might afford Swift tickets, could have on the order of a million dollars net worth (albeit mostly illiquid, tied up in their property). That puts them two orders of magnitude off of Taylor Swift, the sort of person they might see a few times in their life. But it puts them six orders of magnitude above somebody who's flat broke on rock bottom, and they certainly meet that sort of person a lot more than they meet Taylor Swift. The inequality gap between a middle class person and somebody at rock bottom is wider much wider and more pervasive in society than the gap between a common middle class "millionaire" and the billionaires, but all nearly all the internet whining about inequality is focused on the billionaires. Now I grant you, comparing different amounts of zeros is kind of a silly way to think about inequality. Let's get a bit more real: the middle class and billionaires both take a lot for granted that somebody at rock bottom cannot. They both know where they're going to sleep tonight, both feel secure in the knowledge that they're going to have a roof over their heads, stomachs filled with food, medical needs met, etc. Somebody living on the streets has none of that, and that difference is I think far more profound than the difference between the middle class and billionaires. The middle class have to go to work and don't own megayachts or helicopters, but these are trivial matters that needn't worry them so much as somebody living on the street has to worry. Now what about Neolithic times? I think people at rock bottom still existed back then. People who were cast out from their group, due to disease or getting on the losing side of a power struggle, being a weirdo, or whatever the reason. There were probably people who got banished and probably died soon after. And I think there were probably people who were very popular, who were respected and loved by others, or maybe were feared. People who benefited from a strong social safety net, who got given food by others and were protected by others. The inequality gap between them and the banished would have been immense, just as the inequality gap between the homeless and middle class today is immense. If my assumptions about neolithic society are accurate, then it's absurd to say that neolithic society didn't have meaningful inequality because they didn't have billionaires.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

dmurray 3y ago

The article seems to be making the argument that - these "megasites" were bigger and more urban than your typical Neolithic village, and certainly than a typical group of nomads or hunter-gatherers. - normally, increased urbanisation like that would lead to increased levels of inequality, for the reasons you mention (you can acquire more material wealth through specialisation, and it's easier to accumulate it when you don't have to carry it with you) - but actually, from their analysis of floor plan sizes, there wasn't as much inequality as we might expect. It seems a little tenuous to me. I'd like to see their conclusions when you add on the error bars for "just how strongly family wealth correlates to house size", "how accurate is our distribution of house sizes given we only recovered X% of them" and all the other assumptions being made along the way.

pantalaimon 3y ago

festivals are also generally great fun and provide a welcome change from the otherwise often monotonous daily life :)

golergka 3y ago

Many Neolithic cultures had literal slavery, and they also have had very high levels of violence. There's nothing less egalitarian than owning another human being as a thing, as well as raping, killing and pillaging.