The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire

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Our early ancestors lived in small groups and worked actively to preserve social equality. As they created larger societies, however, inequality rose, and by 2500 bce truly egalitarian societies were on the wane. In The Creation of Inequality, Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus demonstrate that this development was not simply the result of population increase, food surplus, or the accumulation of valuables. Instead, inequality resulted from conscious manipulation of the unique social logic that lies at the core of every human group. A few societies allowed talented and ambitious individuals to rise in prestige while still preventing them from becoming a hereditary elite. But many others made high rank hereditary, by manipulating debts, genealogies, and sacred lore. At certain moments in history, intense competition among leaders of high rank gave rise to despotic kingdoms and empires in the Near East, Egypt, Africa, Mexico, Peru, and the Pacific. Drawing on their vast knowledge of both living and prehistoric social groups, Flannery and Marcus describe the changes in logic that create larger and more hierarchical societies, and they argue persuasively that many kinds of inequality can be overcome by reversing these changes, rather than by violence. Half Title......Page 2 Title Page......Page 3 Copyright......Page 4 Epigraph......Page 5 Contents......Page 6 Preface......Page 8 Part I: Starting Out Equal......Page 13 ONE: Genesis and Exodus......Page 14 TWO: Rousseau’s “State of Nature”......Page 30 THREE: Ancestors and Enemies......Page 50 FOUR: Why Our Ancestors Had Religion and the Arts......Page 64 FIVE: Inequality without Agriculture......Page 76 Part II: Balancing Prestige and Equality......Page 97 SIX: Agriculture and Achieved Renown......Page 98 SEVEN: The Ritual Buildings of Achievement-Based Societies......Page 117 EIGHT: The Prehistory of the Ritual House......Page 127 NINE: Prestige and Equality in Four Native American Societies......Page 158 Part III: Societies That Made Inequality Hereditary......Page 188 TEN: The Rise and Fall of Hereditary Inequality in Farming Societies......Page 189 ELEVEN: Three Sources of Power in Chiefly Societies......Page 209 TWELVE: From Ritual House to Temple in the Americas......Page 230 THIRTEEN: Aristocracy without Chiefs......Page 250 FOURTEEN: Temples and Inequality in Early Mesopotamia......Page 258 FIFTEEN: The Chiefly Societies in Our Backyard......Page 293 SIXTEEN: How to Turn Rank into Stratification: Tales of the South Pacific......Page 308 Part IV: Inequality in Kingdoms and Empires......Page 332 SEVENTEEN: How to Create a Kingdom......Page 333 EIGHTEEN: Three of the New World’s First-Generation Kingdoms......Page 359 NINETEEN: The Land of the Scorpion King......Page 384 TWENTY: Black Ox Hides and Golden Stools......Page 410 TWENTY-ONE: The Nursery of Civilization......Page 436 TWENTY-TWO: Graft and Imperialism......Page 462 TWENTY-THREE: How New Empires Learn from Old......Page 489 Part V: Resisting Inequality......Page 529 TWENTY-FOUR: Inequality and Natural Law......Page 530 Notes......Page 549 Sources of Illustrations......Page 581 Index......Page 586