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Without archaeology, there is no way to truly examine economic inequality, its causes, and its consequences over very long time spans on a global scale. Until recently, most grand narratives that purported to tell the story of human inequality over time tended to focus either on European history of the last five to six centuries or snapshots of recent societies, derived following colonial encounters with people around the world. These were then pyramided into proposed stepped sequences of change that were presumed to mimic unilinear temporal processes. Whereas the former was not global, the latter was not even historical.

Well into the 20th century, European history and its colonial global impact empirically underpinned our conceptual lenses on inequality. For this reason, it is hardly surprising that to the present, our grand narratives on the topic tend to see increasing wealth disparities as inevitable. Inequality is seen as a byproduct of population and economic growth, only potentially reversible through the spread of a supposedly nascent rationality birthed at the outset of the modern era, with the rise of the West and the program of governance and education it offered. Alas, over the last decades, as inequality spirals, nowhere more than at the heart of the West in the United States and the United Kingdom, the long-entrenched grand narratives now seem naive and out-of-date.

Fortunately, over the last half-century, archaeologists have gone to work looking beyond ancient temples and tombs and, instead, have been mapping sites and excavating houses. By broadening their vantage beyond kings and courts, archaeologists in many regions of the world have and continue to gather data on diverse segments of past societies; farmers as well as rulers. The systematic cumulation of these data, with a focus on houses, lies at the core of the GINI project, a broad collaborative effort led by Timothy A. Kohler (Washington State University), Amy Bogaard (Oxford University), and Scott Ortman (University of Colorado), which has measured and coded more than 50,000 houses from more than 1,000 archaeological sites.

During the past and present, disparities in housing have been one of the best measures of wealth differences. And with this unprecedented sample, it is now feasible to trace economic inequality across much of the globe over time. Now, for the first time, we can see that neither farming nor population growth nor urban aggregation are simple determinants of inequality. Nor can we point to a uniform, unilinear sequence that accounts for patterns of change across every continent. Nevertheless, when we look across humanity’s past, there are broader tendencies, patterns, and even lessons to absorb and learn.

One clear trend is that through time, across the broad sweep of human history, the potential for inequality has grown due to advances in technology (domesticated crops and animals, enhanced communication, and advances in transport) and the increasing size of human aggregations and nations. These factors are important as they contribute to the growing extent of economic inequality. Yet alone, they are not determinative.

The deeply held story that sedentary settlement, along with farming, prompted the advent of private property, which generated intra-community inequality that was then a basis for the emergence of top-down, autocratic governance simply does not fit most, if any, global regions. It often took millennia after reliance on farming for degrees of economic inequality to tick significantly upward, and only in specific places.

For the regions we examined as part of this research project, the potential for inequality was not uniformly realized or consistently reached. In fact, in general, within global areas, the variances or ranges in the degree of inequality expanded through time. Over and over, and in different ways, people have devised institutions, modes of governance, and leveling mechanisms to muffle that expansive potential for rises in inequality.

Regarding the realized degrees of inequality, population size and the hierarchical complexity of governing institutions do matter in line with long-held narratives. But how those governing institutions were organized, how democratic or autocratic they were, is also a relevant factor—and one not considered in the past when Athens and the Roman Republic were wrongly presumed to be the only political democracies before the modern era. Across human history, people at certain times and places have made choices that quell ever present agentic selfishness and leverage the unmatched human abilities to cooperate and collaborate with large numbers of non-kin.

And yet, past and present, democratic or collective institutions are hard to maintain and sustain. Human cooperation tends to be situational and contingent. Institutions that are organized democratically require constant nurturing and participation. When that is disrupted, participatory, inclusive institutions break down, which is why we see temporal cycles and spatial variation in the degree of inequality across time and geographic space.

Our global sample, along with other recent studies, also holds clues as to why the institutions of governance shift along the axis of concentrated (or personalized) power and more democratic formations with checks and balances. What we see is that when our governing institutions are financed by monopolized resources that are not drawn from the labor and fields of the local population, but rather through external resources, power in governance will likely become concentrated in the hands of a few.

Herd animals, access to metals, and the control of long-distance exchange routes all seem to have a relationship to greater potential for inequality. Whether today or in the deep past, when political power is wielded autocratically, the checks and leveling mechanisms that dampen inequality will tend to break down, and, over time, disparities in wealth will move closer toward their maximal potentials. In this way, the past is a mirror for what we now see.

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This article was produced by Human Bridges, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Cover Image, Top Left: Neolithic mudbrick houses at Mehrgarh, Indus River basin, Pakistan (photograph by Catherine Jarrige © Mission Archéologique de l’Indus). From Amy Bogarde, et al., The Global Dynamics of Inequality (GINI) project: analysing archaeological housing data, Cambridge University Press, 18 December 2023,

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Our ancestors’ ability to recognize water sources was crucial to their survival. As a result, the attraction to lustrous materials is deeply rooted in our evolutionary history and is evident among prehistoric artifacts, ancient civilizations, and modern consumer culture.

During the Pliocene Epoch, early hominins likely traveled between semi-permanent rain pools, restricting their movement to warmer and wetter regions. During the Late Pleistocene, humid forests declined and grassland-savanna habitats expanded.¹ Thus, the ability to detect water sources became extremely important. In the dry savanna conditions of East Africa, early humans relied on small lakes and rain pools to survive seasonal droughts, and many fossil hominid remains have been found near ancient lakeshores, supporting the idea that access to water played a key role in early human migration. The savanna hypothesis suggests that the expansion of African grasslands led directly to the divergence of hominins from apes and the emergence of the genus Homo.²

Natural selection likely chose individuals who could recognize water and wet surfaces, and, according to evolutionary anthropologist Dean Falk’s radiator theory, the success of finding drinking water daily to prevent dehydration and conserve energy played a substantial role in shaping hominin evolution.³

Water still significantly impacts our neurological system, influencing physiological and psychological well-being. Psychology professor Richard Coss and his former student, Craig Keller, conducted a pair of studies published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology in 2022 showing that “gazing at bodies of water can help lower your heart rate, blood pressure, and increase feelings of relaxation.”⁴

The first of Coss and Keller’s studies showed that viewing a swimming pool lowers heart rate and blood pressure versus looking at a street sign and a tree in a parking lot.

The second study measured heart rate and blood pressure when viewing six sites with different amounts of visible water. Viewing water compared to the adjacent ground produced effects consistent with a relaxation response or a decrease in heart rate and blood pressure. Moreover, the studies found that looking at wider portions of water produced higher states of relaxation than narrow portions of water, suggesting that abundant amounts of water have a greater potential to limit dehydration. Clear water also produced a higher state of relaxation than murky water, which may be linked to the health of the water, as clear water is less likely to contain harmful bacteria and produce an unfavorable future state, such as illness.⁵

Meanwhile, a 2010 study by Richard Coss investigated the connection between glossy surfaces and their association with water or wetness. Coss designed an experiment using four different papers with varying surface finishes: matte watercolor paper, glossy silk-screen paper, gritty sandpaper, and sparkly glitter paper designed to be reminiscent of an ocean surface. The study’s participants were asked to examine the surfaces using a questionnaire to assess their wet and dry connotations as well as their overall attitude toward each paper type.

The results demonstrated that glossy surfaces appear significantly wetter than sparkling surfaces, and both the glossy and sparkling surfaces were perceived as wetter than the matte and sandy finishes. The participants’ assessment of the sparkling surface, having been rated lower on the wetness scale than the glossy silk-screen surface, suggests that sparkle does not consistently indicate the presence of moisture.⁶

This discrepancy may stem from the historical uncertainty of sparkling surfaces as an indicator of water since sparkly surfaces can be found in both pools of water and dry materials, such as quartz crystals and other rocky formations. Sparkly surfaces, while being visually stimulating, do not reliably indicate wetness unless they are accompanied by a glossy visual texture. The study’s findings reinforce the point that glossy surfaces convey strong optical information about moisture.

Some researchers have previously assumed that children’s aesthetic preferences were highly influenced by media consumption created by adults, along with innate and learned preferences. However, other research has found that many of these preferences, especially regarding human and animal faces, may develop in early infancy.⁷ Researchers Katrien Meert, Mario Pandelaere, and Vanessa M. Patrick conducted a series of experiments—published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology in 2014—to expand upon this innate quality of having certain aesthetic preferences and establish that there is an inherent preference for glossy surfaces among humans.

Their first experiment demonstrated the preference for glossiness among both adults and children. Leaflets were given to participants, half printed on glossy paper and the other half on matte or non-glossy paper. The participants were asked to arrange the leaflets according to their preference, and the results showed a statistically significant preference for glossy leaflets over non-glossy ones. The latter half of the first experiment investigated the preference for glossiness in young children, using pictures of Santa Claus, half of which were glossy and the other half non-glossy. The children also significantly preferred glossy pictures over non-glossy pictures.

The second experiment tested whether the preference for glossiness was related to the content of the images presented on glossy paper. A random combination of four landscapes was provided to the participants, half printed on glossy paper and the other half on non-glossy paper. This was done to evaluate either the image’s content, the type of paper, or both. The type of paper influenced the responses of all respondents, and glossy images obtained a higher “liking” score. When the type of paper changed, all participants changed their preferences to the image on glossy paper, regardless of the participants’ previous choices and the depicted landscapes.⁸ The two experiments show that liking glossiness manifests before exposure to contemporary cultural stereotypes.

The longstanding affinity for gloss and luster is showcased well by the Aurignacian culture, which is marked by a greater diversification within toolmaking and artistic innovation. This culture spread from the Atlantic Coast to the Iranian Plateau and Western Eurasia and spanned from 43,000 to 30,000 years ago, during which Homo sapiens produced objects of artistic representation.

Luster is a common shared quality of the raw materials chosen by the Aurignacian to make personal ornaments.⁹ Such materials included ivory, soapstone, talc, chlorite, mother of pearl, amber, and even polished tooth enamel from adult human teeth. Ivory is lustrous when manipulated through polishing and was often found during this period, especially in the form of basket-shaped beads. Soapstone had no technological purpose and was not found anywhere before the Aurignacian culture, yet it was sourced from the faraway Pyrenees Mountains, presumably for its surface and visual appeal. Talc and chlorite have a soapy texture when polished, mother of pearl is shiny and iridescent, and the Aurignacian produced some of the oldest known amber pendants.

According to Randall White, early humans manipulated materials to create objects for visual pleasure, a phenomenon exemplified by the members of the Aurignacian culture who actively sought out and crafted objects with a lustrous sheen. Another example comes from the Blombos Cave in South Africa, which dates from 82,000 to 75,000 years ago. People here produced evidence regarding the preference for glossy textures even before the Aurignacian culture. An analysis of 28 bone tools from the cave identified three carefully polished points. The high polish gives a distinctive appearance to these artifacts, but the high shine has no apparent function and was likely done to give the points “added value.”¹⁰

In southwest France, excavations across multiple archaeological sites have uncovered polished, spherical gravels dating to the Upper Gravettian and Solutrean periods. These gravels have garnered interest because of their lustrous appearance and, in some instances, deliberate placement. The 2023 journal article “Multiproxy Analysis of Upper Paleolithic Lustrous Gravels Supports Their Anthropogenic Use” studied key sites such as Fourneau du Diable, Casserole, Pech de la Boissière, Laugerie Haute, and the Landry site, which was excavated in 2011.

Detailed analysis of these gravels confirms that their polished surfaces were intentional modifications. Experimental replication of the polishing process was done by tumbling gravels with animal skins or leather, ocher, and fat. In contrast, abrasion against silt from the Landy site did not produce the same results and ruled out environmental causes of weathering. Furthermore, the uniform amount or degree of shine on each archaeological gravel supported the hypothesis that they were deliberately selected, manipulated, and curated over time.

The high concentration of lustrous gravels in areas associated with domestic activities suggests that their placement was purposeful and meaningful within prehistoric communities. The deliberate selection and modification of these gravels indicate that during the Upper Paleolithic, humans actively pursued and valued lustrous surfaces. These findings align with the broader evidence of prehistoric humans’ appreciation of shiny surfaces.¹¹

Throughout history, many ancient civilizations flourished on riverbanks and in river valleys, such as the Sumerians and the Indus Valley Civilization—reliable access to fresh water supported agriculture, trade, and large population growth. The evolutionary preference for both water and glossy surfaces remains evident in modern human behavior, as many modern cities are situated near water, and the pursuit of shine persists.

People are consistently drawn to landscapes featuring water in both reality and paintings. Children prefer paintings depicting water as a central element even at a young age, according to a study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology in 1983.¹² Real estate trends also reflect this bias, as homes with aquatic views, whether lakes, rivers, or oceans, are significantly more desirable and often valued at higher prices. A pair of studies published in 2010 investigating preferences in both natural and built environments showcased a strong preference for places incorporating aquatic features and a stronger willingness to book a hotel room with water views.¹³ Individuals also tend to associate water with positive memories, linking it to childhood experiences such as swimming and playing near streams.¹⁴

Author Wallace J. Nichols explores water as a “therapeutic landscape” in his book, Blue Mind, which analyzes studies that suggest being near water can have powerful effects on the human psyche.¹⁵ The book provides evidence that water generates a meditative state more powerful than hypnosis techniques and makes us healthier, happier, and more creative.

The association between glossiness and luxury is prevalent in modern marketing strategies. Research by Rui (Juliet) Zhu and Joan Meyers-Levy explores how display surfaces influence the perceptions of products from the consumers’ perspective. They demonstrated that the material beneath a product can alter how trendy, natural, or modern it appears. These results suggest that the glossiness of a store display, when comparing shiny glass versus wood, has a positive impact on the products displayed on it and increases the connotation of modernity.¹⁶

Water and our gravitation toward its associated textures have shaped our aesthetic preferences and many aspects of our material culture. The connection between survival, comfort, and glossy surfaces can be further leveraged in various design and mental health applications beyond aesthetics.

Understanding the evolutionary basis of the preference for symmetry, gloss, and luster can allow designers and mental health professionals to create environments that align with our deeply rooted preferences. As neuroscience continues to emerge in the design landscape, designers can use scientific advancements to create better designs that consider their impact and potential benefits on human emotions and psychology.

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This article was produced by Human Bridges.

Cover Image, Top Left: artellliii72, Pixabay

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¹ Smail, Irene E.; Rector, Amy L.; Robinson, Joshua R.; et al. (2025). “Pliocene Climatic Change and the Origins of Homo at Ledi-Geraru, Ethiopia.” Annals of Human Biology. Vol. 52, No. 1.
² Bobe, René, and Behrensmeyer, Anna K. (2004). “The Expansion of Grassland Ecosystems in Africa in Relation to Mammalian Evolution and the Origin of the Genus Homo.” Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. Vol. 207, Issues 3-4, pp. 399-420.
³ Falk, Dean. (1990). “Brain Evolution in Homo: The ‘Radiator’ Theory.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 333-344.
⁴ Coss, Richard Gerrit, and Keller, Craig. (2022). “Transient Decreases in Blood Pressure and Heart Rate With Increased Subjective Level of Relaxation While Viewing Water Compared With Adjacent Ground.” Journal of Environmental Psychology. Vol. 81, Issue 3.
⁵ Orians, Gordon H., and Heerwagen, Judith H. (1992). “Evolved Responses to Landscapes.” In Barkow, Jerome H.; Cosmides, Leda; and Tooby, John ( eds.), The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, pp. 555-579. Oxford University Press.
⁶ Coss, Richard G. (1990). “All that Glistens: Water Connotations in Surface Finishes.” Ecological Psychology. Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 367-380.
⁷ Langlois, Judith H.; Roggman, Lori A.; and Rieser-Danner, Loretta (1990). “Infants’ Differential Social Responses to Attractive and Unattractive Faces.” Developmental Psychology. Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 153-159.
⁸ Meert, Katrien, Pandelaere, Mario, and Patrick, Vanessa M. (2014). “Taking a Shine to It: How the Preference for Glossy Stems From an Innate Need for Water.” Journal of Consumer Psychology. Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 195-206.
⁹ White, Randall. (2007). “Systems of Personal Ornamentation in the Early Upper Palaeolithic: Methodological Challenges and New Observations.” Rethinking the Human Revolution: New Behavioural and Biological Perspectives on the Origin and Dispersal of Modern Humans, pp. 287-302. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
¹⁰ d’Errico, Francesco., and Henshilwood, Christopher S. (2007). “Additional Evidence for Bone Technology in the Southern African Middle Stone Age.” Journal of Human Evolution. Vol. 52, No. 2, pp. 142-163.
¹¹ Geis, Lila; d’Errico, Francesco; Jordan, Fiona M.; et al. (2023). “Multiproxy Analysis of Upper Palaeolithic Lustrous Gravels Supports Their Anthropogenic Use.” PLOS One.
¹² Zube, Ervin H.; Pitt, David G.; and Evans, Gary W. (1983). “A Lifespan Developmental Study of Landscape Assessment.” Journal of Environmental Psychology. Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 115-128.
¹³ White, Mathew; Smith, Amanda; Humphryes, Kelly; et al. (2010). “Blue Space: The Importance of Water for Preference, Affect, and Restorativeness Ratings of Natural and Built Scenes.” Journal of Environmental Psychology. Vol. 30, Issue 4, pp. 482-493.
¹⁴ Waite, Sue. (2007). “‘Memories Are Made of This’: Some Reflections on Outdoor Learning and Recall.” Education. Vol. 35, No. 4, pp. 333-347.
¹⁵ Nichols, Wallace J. (2014). Blue Mind: The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, On, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do. Little, Brown.
¹⁶ Zhu, Rui (Juliet), and Meyers-Levy, Joan. (2009). “The Influence of Self-View on Context Effects: How Display Fixtures Can Affect Product Evaluations.” Journal of Marketing Research. Vol. 46, No. 1, pp. 37-45.

Until now, at least 14 different species have been assigned to the genus Homo since it emerged in Ethiopia some 2.8 million years ago revealing branching evolutionary stories of survival, intermixing, and extinctions. Archaeology is increasingly allowing us to glimpse into one of those epochs, from 50,000 to 35,000 years ago—the period of transition between the Middle and the Upper Paleolithic eras when modern humans emerged as the last representative of our genus on the planet.

In 2017, new finds from the Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco were published, indicating that our species—H. sapiens—appeared on the scene as early as 300,000 years ago. Spreading into Eurasia l00,000 years later, these early anatomically modern humans rubbed shoulders with Neandertals and Denisovans, and may also have had encounters with five other distinct hominin populations that have only very recently been identified, including H. floresiensis, H. luzonensis, H. longi, and H. juluensis in Asia and Nesher Ramla Homo in the Levant.

Given what we know from historical events that chronicle human population exchanges through time, many archeologists question whether the “disappearances” of these other human lineages might have had anything to do with their coming into contact with modern humans.

Taking an example of human interactions that took place more than half a millennium ago helps us to understand how these interactions can deeply impact the human condition on multiple levels, many of which would be incomprehensible in the prehistoric archeological record without written documents.

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The people of Western Europe living in hierarchized social configurations had reached a stage of technological readiness that led them to innovate ways to sustain life over extended periods of seafaring. As a result, they came into contact with the great civilizations established in the precolonial Americas over hundreds of generations. Before this encounter, the millions of people who lived in the Americas were oblivious to the existence of Europeans who would build powerful empires on the ruins of their treasured territorial and cultural heritage.

The consequences of the ensuing exchanges were both cataclysmic and transformative. Notwithstanding their immeasurable human impact, this contact altered the course of animal demography and deeply affected the global distribution of countless species of plants and trees that the colonizing populations freely displaced and exploited to enrich their own countries. Against the backdrop of this extraordinary scenario was the unprecedented spread of bacterial, viral, and fungal assemblages that indelibly modified evolutionary systems established over millennia—decimating an estimated 90 percent of Indigenous populations in their wake soon after the consolidation of colonization.

While it is difficult for us to conceive the magnitude of global turbulence generated after this event, we know that it led to a new world order that used human slavery to build systems of unidirectional wealth distribution whose ramifications still resound today.

Written records provide information about this period of global turmoil that help us to build our understanding of complex events that occurred in the past. Thirty thousand years from now, how will the multilevel repercussions of this period of human history be reflected in the archeological record?

Unlike the chaotic shifts that rocked the world at the cusp of the European Renaissance, archeologists studying the remote past cannot rely on written accounts of how ancient population interactions played out. In retrospect, it should be pointed out that the decimation of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas involved exchanges among a single human species, whereas the transition from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic involved human forms with distinct or even mosaic genetic, anatomic and sociocultural traits, with only one species remaining by around 35,000 years ago.

In conformity with the doctrines of their time, Europeans justified their actions by evoking cultural and racial differences that they believed made them superior to the populations they subjugated, while uneven levels of technological hegemony allowed them to consolidate domination.

Scientific results emanating from ancient genomics are shedding light on these paleo-interactions and painting a new picture of how humanity evolved, migrated, adapted, and reproduced during this key period of prehistory. Each individual’s genetic code is transcribed in the sequence of the base pairs composing the double-stranded helix of the DNA molecule carrying biological information passed on by reproduction. Discrete sections of a DNA strand are composed of the genes that define phenotypic (observable) and genotypic (hidden) traits defining a population. Throughout the world today, the human genetic code differs between individuals by only around 0.1 percent.

Under the right conditions, genetic data retrieved from ancient human fossils can be a powerful tool to study similarities and differences separating human lineages and is complementary to classical paleontological methods like Linnaean taxonomy and morphometric determination. Recent reconstructions of the genomic histories of fossil H. sapiens, Neandertals, and the Denisovans confirm not only that interspecific breeding took place but also that it produced fertile offspring, suggesting biological mixing played a role in the outcome of the modern human condition.

Having successfully occupied a huge territorial range stretching from the Levant to Western Europe and northward into Siberia for thousands of generations, our cousin species H. neanderthalensis is at the center of the enigma. The paleo-genetic data obtained from Neandertal fossils indicates a complex scenario with physical encounters taking place with modern humans between 65,000 and 47,000 years ago. Meanwhile, a Neandertal genetic inheritance of between 1 and 4 percent has been documented in present-day non-African populations, and gene flow from early modern humans to some Neandertals also took place as early as 100,000 years ago.

Analyzing genetic records from early modern humans living in Siberia and Central Europe 45,000-35,000 years ago revealed comparatively higher and relatively recent admixtures of Neandertal DNA, with these individuals believed to have contributed little to the gene pool of later European populations. In some cases, fossil human remains and their genomic signatures have even been found to display a mosaic of archaic and derived features, leading some paleoanthropologists to consider the possibility that Neandertals did not “disappear,” but rather, they were assimilated into a modern human clade developing in Eurasia at the time.

This raises the possibility of an ancestral population of anatomically modern humans that migrated out of Africa and subsequently underwent speciation as they spread into the ecologically diverse regions of Eurasia, where they evolved locally into diverse groups that occasionally interbred with one another, producing fertile offspring. From the Darwinian viewpoint, the decrease in Neandertal DNA genetic sequences shows that they were not selected in the natural evolutionary process that gave way to modern humans.

To explore this puzzling scenario, some archeologists turn to the cultural record left behind by these ancient human groups. Specific methods applied to study human-made artifacts are used to link them to predefined stages of techno-social evolution traditionally equated with distinct cultural complexes. Since the early 20th century, prehistorians have ascribed these cultural entities to different types of humans. But the apparent inter-specific mixing evidenced by the genetic data and the emergence of H. sapiens far earlier than previously thought have contributed to changing this traditional human-culture equation.

Once conveyed as brutish and primitive, Neandertals were alleged to have been incapable of matching the relatively “advanced” esthetic and technological capacities of their modern human counterparts. But this premise has also changed with new data demonstrating that Neandertals lived in socially advanced groups, that they appear to have practiced some form of art and body ornamentation, and that they intentionally buried their dead, suggesting powerful symbolic and even ritual practices.

So what do the artifacts tell us about the transitional period that saw the replacement of H. neanderthalensis by H. sapiens? A number of archeological sites preserve a record of this transitional phase, with Middle Paleolithic layers yielding the so-called Mousterian artifacts made from prepared stone cores attributed to Neandertals, overlain by strata containing Upper Paleolithic stone blades or bladelets attributed to H. sapiens. The blade industries attributed to modern humans are also associated with finely crafted bone, ivory, and antler artifacts, shell beads, ochre, and diverse forms of figurative art.

Using detailed technological and typological criteria, archeologists further subdivide these cultural complexes, refining the cultural groupings to reconstruct a chrono-cultural framework reflecting human population turnover in time and space. Because only one species of Homo lived during the Upper Paleolithic (after around 35,000 years ago), changes observed in the tool kits are thought to reflect different traditions, rather than different hominins. These shifts are attributed to multiple factors, including cultural transmission through inter-populational contact. However, since multiple species of Homo were present during the Middle Paleolithic, cultural change is often thought to signal the disappearance of one lineage and its replacement by another.

This begs the question: Do we observe a gradual or an abrupt transition from one phase to the next?

If modern humans and Neandertals were interbreeding, then we might assume that they could also have exchanged cultural and technological know-how. This means that we might anticipate finding some blending of cultural evidence, just as we might expect to find hominin fossils with intermediate anatomical traits.

Still, in most cases, the different cultural complexes defined for the Upper Paleolithic—generally beginning with the Early or Proto-Aurignacian cultures—appear sequentially above the Middle Paleolithic deposits, without intermixing of technological, typological, or stylistic features. Paradoxically, what we now know to have been a long period of contact between Neandertals and modern humans is not clearly reflected in the cultural materials found in the archeological record.

But there are some intriguing exceptions. In Western and Central Europe, the Near East, and Siberia, where these intra-specific exchanges are being validated by paleo-genomics and comparative anatomy in several archeological sites, the “intermediary” cultural scenarios are also becoming clearer. In some cases, transitional assemblages with elements inherited from the Middle Paleolithic combine with tools conveying innovative features commonly attributed to the Upper Paleolithic.

For now, there is little consensus about which hominin was responsible for making these “transitional” took kits in the timeframe that witnessed the disappearance or assimilation of the Neandertals and resulted in the ultimate domination of H. sapiens. Further research is needed to clarify humanity’s complex evolutionary history that—in the 3 million years since the emergence of Homo—has only been condensed into a single representative species since around 35,000 years ago.

When we compare this prehistoric chronicle to a transformative historical event for which we have a rich body of written information, we can see how huge revolutions can take place swiftly, almost imperceptibly, on the geological time scale. As archeologists discover more about the transitions in time that led us to where we are today, the subtleties of the complex biocultural mixing nascent to the contemporary globalization of our species are being revealed.

Cover Image, Top Left: ArtSpark, Pixabay

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This article was produced by Human Bridges.

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Archaeologist and scholar Giorgio Buccellati’s book At the Origins of Politics describes how Mesopotamia’s urban revolution in the late fourth millennium BC shaped a new mentality. The segmentation and specialization of industrial production required written recordkeeping, standardization of weights and measures, and surveying and allocation of land planning. This inherent logic of handicraft production and its related organization of trade and market exchange, especially with the palace and temple institutions, led to new forms of social interaction, with the state and its laws and religion consolidating the new managerial hierarchies.

I met Buccellati in 1994 at the first of what would become a decade-long series of Harvard-based colloquia to compile an economic history of the Bronze Age Near Eastern origins of money and interest, land tenure, and its public obligations. Since these innovations were shaped largely by relations with the temples and palaces, our group started by focusing on just what it meant to be public or private.

It was fairly clear what “privatization” meant, but calling the palace or temples “public” was problematic. Royal price schedules for grain, silver, and other key commodities applied only to transactions with these large institutions, which were corporately distinct from the rest of the economy where prices were free to vary. Hammurabi’s laws focused on the relations between the palatial sector and the family-based economy on the land, which followed its own common law tradition for wergild-like personal offenses and other legal problems not involving the palace. How far beyond the palace did the state extend?

Buccellati’s paper focused on a broader philosophical idea of “public” as referring to the overall system of social and economic organization: “The dichotomy between public and private is coterminous with the origin of the city.”1 As he points out in At the Origins of Politics: “The increased size of the settlements created a critical mass, whereby face-to-face association no longer was possible among each member of the social group.” The relationship was political. “On the etymological level, the terms ‘urbanism’ and ‘politics’ are equivalent, given that they both derive from the word for ‘city’ in Latin and Greek respectively.” His term “state-city” emphasizes the overall political and administrative context.

He views industrialization as the economic dimension of the urban revolution that occurred in the late fourth millennium BC. The scale and social complexity of mining (or trading for metal) and metallurgy, beer-making, and weaving involved increasingly impersonal relationships as industrial organizations created products beyond the ability of individuals to make by themselves. The evolution was from direct personal contact to being part of a long, specialized chain.

Describing this takeoff as the first Axial Age, Buccellati explains how economic and social relations had been transformed over the 50,000-year evolution from small Paleolithic groups to urban industrial production, trade, and property relations. The technology and administration of production transformed the character of labor and what Buccellati calls para-perceptual thought. The moral principles of mutual aid, group solidarity, protection of the needy, and basic rights to means of self-support were retained from pre-urban practice but were administered on the state level.

“The state was never able to eliminate or even ignore the people… political ideology became a way for the leadership to justify itself in front of the base,” bolstered by religious attitudes to popularize an “Ideology of Control… the ideology of command, of leadership not necessarily based on coercive means.” Even in the face of “ever-increasing gaps in prestige and economic ability,” the rhetoric of kingship promoted “a sense of solidarity that transcends the limit of reciprocal face-to-face recognition.”

For the king, the aim was to make “submission not just tolerable but actually desirable.” That enabled Mesopotamian rule to be personal and indeed dynastic. “The king was not just the most powerful private individual; he embodied a distinct organism.” Kings were described as serving heaven, as reflected in Hammurapi’s stele depicting him presenting his laws to the god of justice, Shamash (or in some interpretations, receiving them from Shamash).

“The private model was thus superimposed from scratch on the public one,” merging the state and religion as every new king pointed to his ancestors as if this meant continuity of the law. The principle of kings being hereditary was accepted “without ever being formulated in theoretical terms.”

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From Living in a State of Nature to a Stratified Managerial Order

Buccellati describes production as evolving from interpersonal and small scale to institutional and large scale. He describes how Paleolithic hunters and gatherers met their needs by using what they found in nature. They napped flints to make spear points and cutting tools, and wove plant fibers to make clothing, baskets, and other artifacts, but these materials were as they found them. And personal wealth took the form of shells or other objects found in nature. However, the increasing complexity of industrial organization transformed the character of producers in that they ceased to have face-to-face relations with the users of the objects they made. Products evolved increasingly beyond objects found in nature, and also beyond the ability of single individuals to make them as they required chains of transformation via metallurgy and manufacturing.

Although Buccellati does not focus on land tenure, money, and credit in this volume, his analytic schema of the transition from “nature” to man-made institutional structures suggests how land and credit relations evolved along similar lines, from informal and spontaneous to formal and standardized. If there was an archaic relationship with the land, it was for an Indigenous tribe to claim territory as belonging to itself for hunting and gathering and for ceremonial or religious functions.

Most exchange was domestic, taking the form of reciprocal gifts, often of the same food types simply as a means of binding groups together in the spirit of mutual aid. But artifacts were traded among Indigenous communities already in the Ice Age, from one tribal group to another, sometimes passed along over long distances.

Gathering places for such exchange existed already in the Ice Age, often at river crossings or natural meeting points. These would have been seasonal sites, with chieftains responsible for keeping the lunisolar calendar to time when to travel to such spots. If anything, such gathering places were the opposite of the later city that Buccellati describes. The idea was to prevent any one group from dominating others or restricting territorial control. The result was akin to the amphictyonic centers of classical antiquity, neutral zones set aside from political cities and rivalries, with careful equality of participants as a condition for amicable relations.

Deities often were trees, woods, or natural rock formations such as those that survived in Germanic religion into the first millennium of our era, and Japan’s Shinto religion. Lunar and solar deities were part of an astronomical cosmology reflecting the rhythms of nature. By the Bronze Age, gods took on the role of patrons of social authority and justice as urbanization transformed the natural environment.

Technology enabled the production of new shapes and “artifacts that have no analogy in nature.” Mud bricks became standardized to build walls. “Stone is no longer seen as an adaptation of pre-existing forms” but was shaped to produce new building structures. Fire played an important role in controlling the environment, not only to cook food but also to bake mud bricks and harden ceramics, and to refine metal from ores and make alloys such as bronze to produce tools, weapons, and other implements. The potter’s wheel and spindles for weaving were developed, and a managerial class came into being as manufacturing such products required increasingly complex organization, from producers and traders to armies.

The Neolithic agricultural revolution saw the standardization of land, allotted to community members in lots sufficient to support their families, with proportional obligations attached—obliging their holders to serve in the army and provide seasonal corvée labor on communal building projects.

These obligations were what defined land tenure rights. That created a strict relationship with the emerging urban centers that transformed “the village as it existed in prehistory… in the sense of autonomous villages that found an end in themselves. … Agricultural or manufactured production did not have as its end point the village, but rather and especially the urban markets.” Rural villages became part of the city, and local conflicts were settled by traveling urban judges.

Monetization of Exchange Between the Rural and Urban Centers

Money evolved as part of the valuation dimension of exchange. Anthropologists studying surviving Indigenous communities have found that artifacts typically are valued for their rarity or lineage of ownership. In archaic times such objects were often buried with their wearers, having become part of their personal identity. In time, they took a proto-monetary signification of esteem. But it was in southern Mesopotamia that money became formalized as a measure of valuation, simultaneously for domestic agrarian and industrial exchange—mainly for grain and wool—and for foreign trade. In both cases, the palace and temples played a key role. A standardized measure of value was needed for the economy’s own industrial and institutional functioning, not merely for personal decoration and status.

Foreign trade was necessary to obtain raw materials not found in the region’s river-deposited soil. Copper and tin were the key metals that were needed, the alloy of which gave its name to the Bronze Age (3500-1200 BC), but silver was adopted as the main measure of value for palace transactions and those of entrepreneurs, presumably because of its role in religious symbolism. Silver and other commodities were obtained by a mercantile class of entrepreneurs, whose major customers were the palace and temples, which also supplied most of the textiles being exported.

The largest categories of debts and fiscal obligations were inter-sectoral, owed by citizens on the land and mercantile entrepreneurs to the palace sector and its temples. The seasonal character of agriculture made credit necessary to bridge the gap between planting and harvesting, to be paid on the threshing floor when the crop was in. Grain served as the main domestic agrarian measure of value and the medium for paying agrarian debts.

The palace and temples integrated their economic accounts by setting the silver mina and shekel that denominated the value of commodities obtained in foreign trade (and consignments of what was exchanged for them) as equal to corresponding measures of grain, while dividing the relevant measures into 60ths to facilitate the allocation of food and raw materials based on the 30-day administrative month used by the large institutions.

The resulting monetary system of account-keeping for credit and fiscal collection was part of a broader economic context in which standardized weights and measures were used to quantify and calculate the various magnitudes of the inputs required by the large institutions for producing commodities in their workshops, along with the amounts of the charges, fees, and rents payable to the institutions and fiscal collectors.

The surplus grain rent paid to the large institutions supported dependent labor in the weaving and handicraft workshops. Commodities no longer were made by individual craftpersons known to the users, but by many, whose identities were institutional and hence collective and impersonal as far as the buyers or users were concerned. The workforce consisted largely of war widows and orphans, and also slaves captured from the mountains surrounding Mesopotamia. (A typical word for slave was “mountain girl.”)

The textiles woven by this labor were consigned to merchants to act as intermediaries between the large institutions or the growing class of private estate holders and foreign purchasers. Interest charges (usually equal to the original loan value for consignments of five years) served as a means for consigners and backers to obtain their share of the gain that merchants were expected to make on their trade.

Bucellati shows how the urban revolution’s “evolutionary process in motion” to transform society and with it “the very nature of human existence.” The development of writing, for instance, had a deep effect in transforming thought processes, much as the creation of languages had served to “externalize thought.” It enabled the communication of ideas to others without having to rely on memory.

Originally used by the eighth millennium BC to oversee and quantify trade and exchange transactions, it came to be used for accounting and credit, and increasingly to preserve, arrange and order thoughts, public announcements, treaties, poetry, and laws. The written word became a new medium for thought. Buccellati describes this “reification of thought” as part of the “removal from nature.” That was part of the evolving uniformity that spread from the production of commodities to shape the overall social order.

Debt Strains Lead Rulers to Protect Their Economies From Polarizing

Industry and entrepreneurial foreign trade concentrated control and wealth in the hands of managers and “big men.” Their economic gains caused a wealthy class to emerge, initially within the large institutions, with credit being used to pry labor away from palace control. Creditor claims on indebted cultivators accumulated, largely at the institutional level of landholders, merchant-creditors, and also ale-women, whose customers ran up tabs for their beer, to be settled at “payday” on the threshing floor when crops were harvested.

It was inevitable that strains would develop as a result of the rising role of credit and debt relations, especially in times of flooding or crop failure. As rent and other payment arrears and interest charges mounted up, private lending (often by royal or temple officials acting on their own account) became the major initial way to obtain the labor of debtors, by requiring them to work off their debts. That prevented cultivators from performing the stipulated corvée and military service that they owed in exchange for their land tenure rights.

The result was a threefold conflict: first, creditors against debtors; second, creditors against the palace over the appropriation of labor via debt bondage; and third, the assertion of creditor power against traditional communal moral ideas of equity and mutual aid. Archaic communities traditionally sought to minimize economic inequality, perceiving much personal wealth as being achieved by exploiting others, above all by indebting them. By the third millennium, indebted cultivators faced the threat of being disenfranchised, losing their personal freedom and self-support land through foreclosure.

As Buccellati observed in our 1994 colloquium royal protection of homesteaders, canceling the overgrowth of personal debt resulted “more from a concern for the public domain than as a phenomenon of privatization.” Rulers from the third millennium BC onward protected palace claims on the labor of their citizens from being disrupted by debt strains of the type to which subsequent Western civilization has succumbed. Sumerian rulers made sure that these strains would not be permanent because that would have been at the expense of the palace’s own requirements for corvée and military service from agrarian debtors.

Buccellati pertinently notes that three main considerations shaped Near Eastern public laws: “the concept of rules, the sense of justice, [and] the decisive moments in resolving conflict.” Hammurapi’s “code” was simply a collection of judgments, but his andurarum proclamations were enforced by the courts to cancel personal debts (but not mercantile debts), liberate bondservants (but not slaves), and redistribute self-support land (but not townhouses) that had been forfeited to creditors or sold under economic duress. These Clean Slates were the most basic royal administrative acts of Mesopotamian rulers from Sumerian times onward. They were the moral pillar of the state.

The Mesopotamian State Solved the Debt Problem That Western Civilization Has Not

Buccellati sees the transformation of production, economic control, and ways of perceiving and thinking about one’s place in society as progressing toward a geopolitical peak with the Assyrian Empire. What enabled and made this sustained achievement so successful were royal laws to regularly restore economic balance on a system-wide level. Clean Slate proclamations prevented a creditor oligarchy from emerging to rival palace claims on the labor and crop surpluses of citizens on the land. In this respect, the distinction between financial and industrial gain-seeking—and the socially destructive character of usury and creditor self-interest—was recognized already in the third millennium BC in the Hymn to Shamash, the Akkadian god of justice (lines 103-106):

What happens to the loan shark who invests his resources at the (highest) interest rate?

He will lose his purse just as he tries to get the most out of it.

But he who invests in the long term will convert one measure of silver into three.

He pleases Shamash and will enrich his life.2

Buccellati rightly states that “We are the heirs of Mesopotamian perception and political experience.” Modern civilization, however, has retrogressed from the Bronze Age Mesopotamian achievement of avoiding deepening financial and economic imbalance. He notes that modern society defines property as being alienable, but in the West securing property rights always has entailed the “right” to forfeit it to creditors or sell under duress—irreversibly. That has been the case ever since Near Eastern commercial and credit practices were brought to the Aegean and Mediterranean lands in the first millennium BC.

The West has adopted the basic economic practices invented in the fourth and third millennia BC, but not the economically protective measures that rulers took to annul the buildup of creditor claims to reverse the increase in debt bondage and loss of land by debtors. That decontextualization is what in my view makes the West “Western.”

Bronze Age Near Eastern practice was so different from the Western worldview that most modern historians resist recognizing and appreciating the relevance of the region’s takeoff in the fourth and third millennia BC. Indeed, today’s anti-state economic ideology denies that money and industrial enterprise could have been innovated by what Buccellati calls the state, that is, the palatial authority.

This ideology obscures a great question posed for the West: How is it that Near Eastern “divine kingship” achieved what Western democracy has failed to do: check the emergence of a creditor rent-seeking oligarchy, which in classical antiquity would strip the Greek, Italian, and other populations of their means of self-support that had formed the basis of economic liberty for the first 3,000 years of the Mesopotamian takeoff that this book so comprehensively describes.

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1. Buccellati, Giorgio, “The Role of Socio-Political Factors in the Emergence of ‘Public’ and ‘Private’ Domains in Early Mesopotamia,” in Hudson, Michael and Levine, Baruch (eds.), Privatization in the Ancient Near East and Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass: Peabody Museum [Harvard], 1996):131.

2. In Giorgio Buccellati, “When on High the Heavens…”: Mesopotamian Religion and Spirituality with Reference to the Biblical World (London, 2024):194, citing Reiner, Erica, Your Thwarts in Pieces, Your Mooring Rope Cut: Poetry from Babylonia and Assyria (Ann Arbor, 1985): 68-84, and W.G. Lambert, W.G., Babylonian Wisdom Literature (Oxford, 1960): 122-138.

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This text is adapted from Michael Hudson’s foreword to At the Origins of Politics by Giorgio Buccellati, and this excerpt was produced by Human Bridges.

Cover Image, Top Left: Markuk and Mesopotamia. MythologyArt, Pixabay

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Taylor & Francis Group—The evolutionary roots of human dominance and aggression remain central to social and political behavior, and without conscious intervention these primal survival drives will continue to fuel inequality and division.

These are the arguments of a medical professor who, as global conflicts rise and democracies face growing challenges, says understanding how dominance and tribal instincts fuel division is more critical than ever.

In A New Approach to Human Social Evolution, Professor Jorge A. Colombo MD, PhD explores neuroscience, anthropology, and behavioral science to provide a new perspective on human social evolution.*

He argues that fundamental behavioral drives – such as dominance, survival instincts, and competition – are hardwired into our species and continue to shape global politics, economic inequality, and social structures today. Without a conscious effort to counteract these instincts, we risk perpetuating the cycles of power struggles, inequality, and environmental destruction that define much of human history.

“In an era marked by rising authoritarianism, economic inequality, environmental crises, and nationalism, understanding how ancient survival mechanisms continue to shape human behavior is crucial,” he explains. “With increasing polarization in politics, conflicts over resources, and the struggle for social justice, I contend that only through education and universal values can humanity transcend these instincts to foster a more sustainable and equitable society.”

Professor Colombo, who is a former Full Professor at the University of South Florida (USA) and Principal Investigator at the National Research Council (CONICET, Argentina), explains how current human behaviour evolved based on an ancient heritage of animal drives which has been progressively built and placed into practice— grounded on survival, social gain, and profit— and is compressed to our basic neural systems and basic survival behavioral construction.

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When humans shifted from prey to universal predator, it affected the organization of the human brain, he argues. However, the human species also had to contend with the notion of mortality, and so in our core neural circuits (mainly in the basal brain) survive our basal drives (reproductive, territorial, survival, feeding), basic responses (fight, flight), and the thresholds for their behavioural expression.

Over time, he explains, thanks to the brain’s plasticity, it has added a neurobiological scaffolding on top of our animal drives, allowing for the emergence of traits such as creativeness, cognitive expansion, artistic expression, progressive toolmaking, and rich verbal communication.

Nevertheless, he argues, these traits did not deactivate or suppress those ancient drives and only succeeded in diverting (camouflaging) their expression or repressing them temporarily.

He argues that humans are bound to their ancestral demands imprinted as a set of basic drives (territorialism, reproduction, survival, secure feeding sources, dominance, and cumulative behaviour), which exist in friction with our cultural drives.

“Ancient animal survival drives persist in humans, masked under various behavioural paradigms. Fight and flight remain basic behavioural principles. Even subdued under religious or mystic beliefs, aggressive and defensive behaviours emerge to defend or fight for even the most sophisticated peaceful beliefs, and events throughout humankind’s history support this evidence,” he explains.

He points to examples of dominance in politics (military oppression, propaganda, or financial repression), religion (punishing gods, esoteric menaces), and education (forms of punishment and thought process conditioning).

However, dominance exerted through political, economic, social class, or military power adds privileged structures to social construction, Colombo argues.

As a dominant species with evolved cultural and technological strategies, it has resulted in the over-exploitation of natural resources, the development of arms of massive destruction, strategies to foster massive consumerism, and political means to manipulate public opinion, which also, in turn, create poverty, deprivation, marginalization, and oppression.

He argues that without education and the promotion of universal values involving individual opportunities to evolve and protect the environment, more communities will become undernourished, impoverished, and without access to primary healthcare or adequate education for the continuous changes in the modern world.

He points to AI as an example of a growing, uneven educational gap that would reinforce socioeconomic disparity and social inequality. He argues that people should proactively create policies to work towards a viable, multicultural, equitable humanity and an ecologically sustainable planet.

“The aggressiveness, cruelties, social inequities, and unrelenting individual and socioeconomic class ambitions are the best evidence that humans must first recognize and assume their fundamental nature to change their ancestral drive,” he suggests. “Profound cultural changes are only possible and enduring if humans come to grips with their actual primary condition.”

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Article Source: Taylor & Francis Group news release

Image, Top Left: Hansuan_Fabrigas, Pixabay

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Power in human societies is often viewed as hierarchical, meaning that it’s tiered and ranked. This view doesn’t fully capture the complexity of how power is managed in different cultures. Some societies are not strictly hierarchical but heterarchical, where power is distributed among various groups or individuals who work together without a clear ranking. There is ample evidence for the existence of heterarchy for a variety of forms of social and political power, including in the archaeological record.¹

Historically, the idea that more complex societies are superior to simpler ones has justified racism, colonialism, and domination. However, research conducted since the end of the 20th century increasingly shows that all human societies are fluid and interconnected, with power often shared among different groups.

Understanding these power dynamics helps us see how societies change over time. For example, when an elite group loses control of trade, new power structures may emerge, such as guilds or associations. These changes affect the entire society and can lead to more distributed power and democratic institutions.

The combined study of heterarchy and hierarchy allows us to trace how societies adapt and respond to challenges. It shows that power can shift and evolve into new forms of social organizations that help societies survive and thrive, even if they may face new tensions or conflicts later.

A Closer Look At Authority Structures

Heterarchies are self-organizing systems in which elements engage and affect one another. In the context of social systems, the relative power of groups can change based on the situation, which often depends on the degree of communication and collaboration among entities with different sources of power. When power is consolidated in a society by merging distinct entities (for example, religious, political, or economic) into a single, tightly controlled system (hyper-hierarchy or hypercoherence), there is less flexibility in dealing with surprise.²

The term polity is preferred to include the gamut of political organizations. Keep in mind that no polities are entirely hierarchical or heterarchical but instead are diverse and have changing packages of governance. For example, some organizations (armies, police, and firefighters) are necessarily quite hierarchical to clarify chains of command but can serve a polity in which all citizens have free access to health care.

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Hierarchical Polities

Administrators in strong hierarchies (authoritarian states, oligarchies, and hyper-hierarchies) have several advantages. Due to a clear decision-making chain, they respond well to fast-developing crises (such as a military attack or insurrection). Because the rules and responsibilities are familiar, political interactions among decision-makers are fewer and more formalized, and political maintenance of the system is low. Administrative hierarchies are equipped with powerful security forces that can successfully defend the state perimeter and suppress internal dissent.

Polities that are strongly hierarchical are at a disadvantage, however, because data-gathering techniques, tied to the pyramidal decision-making framework, slow or stop the arrival of important information (especially subversive activity) at the apex of the pyramid. This necessitates the formalization and elaboration of internal security forces. Decisions are not necessarily popular; dissatisfaction is high and there must be considerable investment in coercion or propaganda. This also leads to high security costs. An example of this can be seen in most military dictatorships. In Chile under Augusto Pinochet, for example, the regime held onto power through the systematic suppression of opposition parties and the persecution of dissidents.

Heterarchical Polities

Administrators in polities with a strong heterarchical organization receive good quality information from many sources within and outside the decision-making lattice. In general, decisions are fair and reflect popular consensus. Decision-makers hear of a variety of solutions to problems. Because heterarchies are more likely to value the contributions of disparate segments of the community (ethnic groups and women, for example), their society is better integrated and the workforce is proud and energized.

Heterarchical polities are at a disadvantage because consensus is slow to achieve. Decision-makers must engage with constituents, requiring considerable time, energy, and constant maintenance. The cacophonous voices and choices a decision-maker hears complicate the search for workable solutions. The greater the groups’ involvement and trust in the system, the greater the possibility of consensus, but the response time is slower, and long-range planning is more difficult.

Trade-offs

Heterarchies value spontaneity, flexibility, and a definition of state power that involves balancing diverse elements. Individuals gain status through merit (rather than through inheritance or loyalty). State power should be used to improve citizens’ safety and well-being. Hierarchies, by contrast, value rule-based authority, rigid class lines linked to ascribed as well as achieved status and rank, a control definition of state power, and once achieved, the status quo. State democracies exhibit characteristics of both, which explains in part why they are more stable than authoritarian states.

Key Issues for Future Research

In all societies, the power of various individuals and factions fluctuates relative to changing circumstances. Today, as resources worldwide are being depleted and environmental conditions deteriorate, new ways to stabilize societies and reduce conflict must be found. One of the most important conditions for reducing conflict is to ensure inclusive and equitable conditions for everyone, particularly as regards food and water security, personal and group safety, and a satisfying quality of life.

In human societies, heterarchy is a corrective to power theories that conflate hierarchy with (civil) order, thereby creating a conundrum: will you submit and be safe or resist at your peril? To reenvision an equitable future for humankind, there must be a means to conceptualize and evaluate shifts between exclusive and inclusive power relations in diverse spatial and temporal scales and contexts. There must also be a way to assess the implications of each type of relationship in terms of how beneficial it is to society and how suitable it is for the future.

Created in the process of building nation-states around the globe, analytic tools that measure efficiency illuminate only hierarchical political, economic, and social forms and ignore the stabilizing power of heterarchical forms; in this way, hyper-hierarchical and other inherently unstable forms of wealth distribution and political power accumulate. The controlling model of hierarchy-as-order, ubiquitous and all but invisible, exacerbates growing tensions.

Bioarchaeology as a Window to Political Relationships

Public policies, systems of exchange, subsistence strategies, and social roles structure how people obtain resources and how they experience the result of toil and violence. Bioarchaeology (the scientific study of biological remains from archaeological sites) and genomics have become invaluable to the study of early political relationships.

It is now possible to reconstruct many aspects of an individual’s life by extracting DNA and evaluating trauma in human remains. In addition to much more reliable identification of sex and age at death, we can now know the region where a person was born, if they traveled widely or emigrated to another region, and we can find clues to what they ate, the kind of work they did, and how they were treated. Together these pieces of information can form a picture of life as lived, marking stressful and tranquil periods that the person and/or the group survived.

These new tools produce reliable determinations of historic risk and vulnerability across various scales, from the individual level to large populations. While community-wide governance in smaller-sized groups is no surprise, this was also seen in cooperative states, regions, and urban agglomerations (Callejón de Huaylas/Requay, central Thailand, Mimbres, Tiawanaku, and Marroquíes) and even empires (Xianbei and Genghis Khan’s Mongols) that were collaboratively organized.³

Future Thinking

This is important information for the human future: the old paradigm that asserted competition and conflict to be the primary motors of civilization can now be reconsidered. In the course of human history, societies engaged in cooperative activities that advanced their well-being, and they also fell into conflict or under the rule of tyrants. If we begin with the premise that the tension between competition and cooperation exists in all human societies, it then behooves us to explore the ways rules and norms permit or deny each other, and how both interact with history and changing conditions to forge institutions.⁴

The political climates of the past demonstrate that human accomplishment is not on a rising staircase culminating in the state; instead, we find a long history of diverse experiments and their results, to which we now have access. In the contemporary world, we face an important question: How can the equity and effectiveness of coalitions, federations, leagues, unions, and communities in societies of all sizes help us construct and strengthen societies of the future?

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¹ Angelbeck, Bill and Grier, Colin. (2012). “Anarchism and the Archaeology of Anarchic Societies.” Current Anthropology 53(5): 547-587.

Chapman, Robert. (2003). Archaeologies of Complexity. London, Routledge.

Ehrenreich, Robert M.; Crumley, C.L.; and Levy, Janet E. (eds.) (1995). “Heterarchy and the Analysis of Complex Societies.” Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association no. 6. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association.

Kohring, Sheila, Wynne-Jones, Stephanie (2007). Socialising Complexity: Approaches to Power and Interaction in the Archaeological Record. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Souvatzi, Stella G. (2008). A Social Archaeology of Households in Neolithic Greece: An Anthropological Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

² Piketty, Thomas. (2014). Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

³ Becker, Sara K. and Juengst, Sara L. (eds.) (2020). “Cooperative Bodies: Bioarchaeologists Address Nonranked Societies.” Vital Topics Forum, American Anthropologist 122 (4).

Thurston, T.L., and Fernández-Götz, Manuel (eds.) (2021). Power from Below in Premodern Societies: The Dynamics of Political Complexity in the Archaeological Record. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

⁴ Chapman, Robert (2003). Archaeologies of Complexity. London: Routledge

Cover Image, Top Left: MetsikGarden, Pixabay

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This article was produced by Human Bridges.

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It was a remarkable discovery. In March of 2020, the journal Antiquity published a research paper detailing the analysis by a team from the University of Exeter, University of Cambridge, Kostenki State Museum Preserve, University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Southampton, of what has been referred to as a mammoth-bone circle located at the village of Kostenki, 500 km south of Moscow in the Russian Plains. Dated to 20,000 BP, it is now considered the oldest known circular structure of mostly mammoth bones like this built by humans in present-day Ukraine and the west Russian Plain. So far, 70 such structures have been discovered in the region. While most of the bones at the Kostenki site consisted of a total of 51 mammoth lower jaws and 64 mammoth skulls used to construct the 30ft by 30ft wall structure, with other mammoth bones scattered within its interior, site investigators also found bones of reindeer, horse, bear, wolf, red fox and arctic fox. They also recovered more than 300 stone and flint chips—debris created from knapping stone nodules into sharp tools that could be used for tasks like butchering animals and scraping hides. 

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The Kostenki mammoth-bone circle remains as can be seen within the museum. Владислав Тищенко, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

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Mammoth bones at Kostenki (detail). evatutin, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

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Why were these structures built?

Archaeologists have advanced several possible explanations, ranging from habitation to places used for community activity and ritual/religious practices. None of them offer a slam-dunk interpretation of their purpose.

Enter here John Gleissner, a retired attorney, writer, history buff, and deer/meat hunter for 40 years, who undertook an extensive study of the available evidence for mammoth hunting by prehistoric humans. His conclusory hypothesis:

The mammoth-bone circles were actually smokehouses.

“Hunting experience and meat processing of wild game allowed me to see the practical aspects missed by a large number of archaeologists,” says Gleissner. “Many archaeologists failed to recognize the practical aspects of meat science, carcass transportation, and the accumulation of so much bone and so many tusks in these isolated locations”. Gleissner continues, “The hunters only had two basic options to bring the raw meat directly to a form for immediate consumption or, at their discretion, stored for future consumption. One of those options was dried, tough, stringy fully dried meat strips, and the other was to smoke larger pieces and retain some moisture.”

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According to his suggestion, which he calls the Smokehouse Hypothesis, the Paleolithic hunters killed mammoths in the beds of the rivers, floated the carcasses down to a location near their settlements located on promontories above the rivers, butchered the mammoths, and then took the meat to smokehouses they constructed on promontories above the rivers to smoke, cure and store. Each mammoth could produce two to three metric tons of raw meat, which had to be processed at one time.

“River transport of the carcasses is the only way that many skulls, tusks, bones, and meat could be brought to a single location,” Gleissner maintains.

Moreover, if Gleissner’s hypothesis can be supported through further study, the Paleolithic hunters may have used what could be one of the earliest forms of cold-smoking—the food preservation technique that involves exposing food to smoke at a low temperature without cooking it. 

Archaeologist Dr. Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University encouraged and supported, with literature, Mr. Gleissner’s research. “Archaeologists found many artifacts consistent with smokehouses in the smokehouse floors,” continued Gleissner, “and we are indebted to them for all their research.”

“Smokehouses included mammoth-bone circles, large oval smokehouses, and long smokehouses,” he added. “The most telling clues are nine (9) hearths arranged in a line around a structure matching that arrangement, with the line along a precise NW/SE axis. Back in Dolni-Vestonice (an Upper Paleolithic archaeological site near the village of Dolní Věstonice in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic), [for example] some of the floors of the smokehouses had 80 to 100 cm of ash forming the floors”.

Gleissner emphasizes the importance of terrain, hunting site advantages, and that all the mammoth-bone circle settlements were directly above navigable rivers. In a more detailed research manuscript, he details the bulk work efficient “production line” from first observing mammoths to consumption of smoked meat. He has submitted the manuscript to a number of  peer-reviewed academic journals. He anticipates publication this year.

Meanwhile, new discoveries and research will likely continue to produce new questions and answers revolving around the mysterious mammoth-bone circles of Ice Age hunters marking the landscape of present-day eastern Europe and Russia. One unanswered question is: where did the hunters spend the winters? Gleissner doubts they spent it on the tops of ridges and hills exposed to the winds of the Russian Plain.

Cover Image, Top Left: Mammoth, AI-generated. JuliusH, Pixabay  https://pixabay.com/users/juliush-3921568/

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We used to have “balloon” debates in school: The hot-air balloon is losing height and, to avoid disaster, people must be jettisoned. To avoid this fate, everybody must justify why they should remain on board and their classmates then vote them “on” or “off.”

In reality, the result was determined entirely by one’s popularity. But perhaps this is always the case. In seeking to avoid funding cuts, for example, museums or cultural services are often considered easy targets, since archaeologists and heritage professionals are far less useful than doctors, engineers, or mathematicians. Beyond archaeology itself, cultural heritage has few friends, one might argue.

But I present the argument that far from being the irrelevant or outdated subject some politicians, career advisers, and university leaders might consider it to be, archaeology is essential to the future of humanity and planetary health. This is for three main reasons. First, archaeologists have the capacity to think about and to understand humanity of the past, and to project that insight into the future. Second, archaeologists are uniquely placed to comprehend the many and complex ways in which humans, over time, have related to their environment and environmental and other processes, such as the changing climate, migration, or pandemics. And third, archaeology provides opportunities for everyone to benefit, whether in terms of physical (by undertaking surveys or excavations) or mental health (through social interaction or artifact handling, to address loneliness or anxiety, for example).

York Archaeology’s Archaeology on Prescription project is one example of this: The program enables adults facing various conditions to gain a detailed understanding of life in a specific area of York, and in the process to improve their health and well-being, on top of volunteerism’s generally positive health effects, as demonstrated by a 2024 article.

In my new book, Wicked Problems for Archaeologists, I examine a few creative ways that we can use archaeology to help directly address some of the global challenges that threaten both human and planetary health. The book’s main argument is that as archaeologists we need to stop thinking only about the past and also think about the future. We also need to engage more with policymakers to help them address their challenges and opportunities.

Wicked Problems

Wicked problems emerged from research in the late 1960s to devise ways of using outcomes from the United States’ NASA-funded space program to help resolve urban problems such as crime and poverty. The definition of wicked problems as those that are “complex, intractable, open-ended, and unpredictable” captures both the scale of these problems and the difficulties they entail. We also now have “super-wicked problems” that introduce the additional dimension of time (or the lack of time to be precise). Super-wicked problems are in addition to the original 10 characteristics of wicked problems, defined by Horst W.J. Rittel and Melvin M. Webber:

1. Time is running out;
2. There is no central authority, or only a weak authority, to manage the problem; and
3. The same actors causing the problem are required to help solve it.

Both climate change and environmental pollution are examples of super-wicked problems in which archaeologists have recently become involved, including my own work in the Galápagos and the wider South Pacific region. Social injustice, crime, and conflict are widely used as examples of wicked problems.

Small Wins

I suggest that the only realistic way to achieve success with wicked and super-wicked problems, and ultimately to make a difference, is by adopting a small-wins framework. These small wins (also referred to as small gains or nudges) align well with what universities in the UK refer to as impact, which, for the purposes of the UK’s Research Excellence Framework is defined as, “an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia.” Small wins have been defined by theorist Karl Weick as, “a series of concrete, complete outcomes of moderate importance [that] builds a pattern that attracts allies and deters opponents.” The strategy of small wins incorporates sound psychology and is sensitive to the pragmatics of policymaking. Examples of small wins include the plastic pollution work in the Galápagos and neighboring coastal South America, and the Archaeology on Prescription project, referred to previously.

But even with small wins, we need to be careful. Wicked problems are deeply entangled with one another, meaning that any solution to one problem may exacerbate other problems elsewhere. Climate change and social injustice are a well-known example of this entanglement.

Promoting Success

Once small wins have been achieved, as archaeologists, we need to tell influential people about the outcomes so that our museums and galleries, local services, and archaeology departments are not threatened with closure by people who fail to understand the significance (or the potential) of the work we do.

For this conversation to happen, we need spokespeople who are good at communicating and have access to data and projects that deserve to be talked about. Archaeology needs influencers, or policy entrepreneurs as they are sometimes referred to. As archaeologists, we have not always been very good at this. It is probably why climate scientists on the IPCC don’t take much notice of us.

Preparing Archaeologists for a Wicked Future

We also need to think about how we manage people, resources, and priorities within our profession and how we prepare students for wicked futures. Management leadership scholar Keith Grint has explained how, across disciplines, academics need to be collaborative and passionate leaders inspiring an even more collaborative and passionate next generation. These, he thinks, are essential qualities for creating structures conducive to successfully addressing wicked problems.

We should also be looking to create (and teach our students to prepare for) some entirely new business models that provide the foundations for success: for example, new board structures that provide opportunities for younger people. Often advisory boards and boards of trustees are composed of older people with more experience. Younger idealists are often not welcome because they lack real-world experience. But for a world of wicked problems, we need to be much more creative. The old ways have not worked, so we need to try some new ones.

The Council for British Archaeology’s Youth Advisory Board is an excellent example of what can be done easily and immediately. And as archaeologists, we must continue to teach students how to find, research, interpret, and conserve the places and the materials from which we create an understanding of the past and its relevance in the present. These skills are fundamental to archaeology. But we need to go further.

To ensure that the relevance of archaeology is widely felt, students also need to learn how to communicate with non-specialists. To engage with wicked problems they must also learn about global challenges, and activism, and think more about the future. We need to produce what Paul Handstedt calls “wicked students.”

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This article was produced by Human Bridges.

Cover Image, Top Left: NickyPe, Pixabay

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Editor’s Note: In this op-ed piece, archaeologist and activist Luca Nejrotti spells out the important considerations that must be made when undertaking renewable energy initiatives in a sustainable way, especially when multiple environmental, cultural, community and archaeological factors are at play. He uses a real-time, real-life example of wind farms and electricity generation and distribution in a critically vulnerable area in Italy as an example.

Sorano, Italy:  Italy, a country proverbially rich in archaeological and natural heritage, has recently been the stage for a heated debate between those advocating for an unreserved shift to renewable energy and those calling for a more region-sensitive approach. In a nation that has enshrined its landscape as a key element in its Constitution, this is an intense debate that sees unlikely foes and curious bedfellows.

The “Cultura e Territorio” Association, a group of archaeologists, believes that the archaeologist’s perspective can offer a valuable contribution. As such, the association has taken a stand, particularly against a project in an area we know very well: the construction of 8 industrial wind turbines on the Sorano mountain, in southern Tuscany, at the border of Lazio and Umbria. This project will be managed and executed by “Energia Sorano”, by Fred Olsen Renewables Italy S.r.l., a subsidiary of a much larger company based in Norway, known for building massive offshore installations. Interestingly, like many newly established companies formed to pursue this type of project in Italy, it is undercapitalized relative to the budgets typically required for such large-scale projects, with only 100,000 euros in share capital. They likely plan to recapitalize as needed over time; however, this precarious setup doesn’t inspire confidence in the timely coverage of construction, routine and extraordinary maintenance, and decommissioning costs.

It’s important to note that this project is still in the planning phase. This means that if the concerns of local and broader communities are heeded, the project may not proceed. However, if it does, construction could begin as early as the end of 2025. The push for ecological transition in Europe, especially post-COVID, has been rapid and backed by substantial funding. But many opportunists have seized this momentum to speculate, and now hundreds of projects have emerged in Italy, before the country even had the opportunity to establish comprehensive, sector-specific regulations.

As it stands, local governments are tasked with identifying areas suitable for renewable energy installations. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Environment and Energy Security is overwhelmed by a flood of proposals with designs to slip through before updated regulations are in place. Many of these proposals exploit older regulations intended for smaller, less intrusive projects, opening the door to large, disruptive installations.

In the case of Sorano (with just eight turbines), the project’s documentation technically meets legal requirements. However, a deeper examination reveals glaring flaws. The reports on local regulations, fauna, flora, geology, archaeology, and public health are superficial, rely on outdated data, overlook key regulations that protect areas like ours, and selectively omit critical information (such as the failure to mention a castle that lies within the construction zone). In cases where data is clearly missing, the proposal simply promises to conduct necessary assessments (e.g., soil stability tests) only after construction begins.

If these oversights go unchallenged, there is a real risk that the project will be approved in Rome, where reviewers may lack local knowledge and resources to carry out comprehensive checks. This could result in the approval of an unfeasible project, which, once construction starts, could stall, leaving behind a devastated landscape with no clear path to restoration.

One key concern is the scale of the proposed wind farm, which, although consisting of a small number of turbines, must be considered in the context of the over fifty other renewable energy projects planned for the area spanning Tuscany, Lazio, and Umbria. This region, home to the same unique landscape, culture, and natural beauty, suffers from being sparsely populated, economically disadvantaged, and politically underrepresented. If all these projects, many proposed by the same companies, were approved, they could irrevocably alter the landscape and ecosystem.

The local community in Sorano and the surrounding communities of Lazio and Maremma have already voiced strong opposition to the project, and our association, which has worked for years to protect and promote the cultural heritage of this region, has officially raised concerns. The very nature of the land makes the site proposed for the wind turbines highly unsuitable. These massive turbines, each 200 meters tall with rotor diameters of 160 meters, would require foundations of reinforced concrete with a diameter of 24.5 meters and a depth of 3.4 meters. The entire construction area is located in a rare karst landscape, a unique geological formation created by seismic activity in the Pleistocene. The land here is already prone to landslides, which are actively monitored, making it an inherently unstable site for such large-scale development. The stresses imposed by a major construction project, involving new roads, excavation, and the installation of oversized turbines, could cause significant environmental damage and be utterly dangerous for the houses all around.

Further compounding the issue, the site is located near the Monte Penna Nature Reserve, home to many vulnerable bat species and birds of prey such as the red kite, buzzard, peregrine falcon, and owl. These species rely on the area for nesting and migratory routes. While eight turbines may seem modest, when combined with the hundreds of others planned for the region, they would form an unnatural barrier to critical ecological corridors, which are vital for wildlife migrations along the Fiora, Paglia, and Tiber river valleys (which are now officially protected by regional laws).

The archaeological significance of the area only adds to the complexity of the situation. The construction site would require the movement of heavy machinery, widening of existing tracks, and the creation of new roads, all of which could damage important archaeological sites. The Roccaccia of Montevitozzo, a medieval fortress dating back to at least the 12^th century, stands at the heart of this area. The castle was a strategic stronghold contested in the Middle Ages by the Aldobrandeschi, Siena, and Orvieto, and offers one of the most breathtaking panoramic views of the region. It even appears in a Papal Bull from 1188, alongside references to its village and church, both of which remain to be discovered.

Nearby, evidence of prehistoric occupation, including a hillfort at Monte Penna and a cinnabar mine at Cornacchino, where tools dating back to the Neolithic have been found, further highlights the region’s rich archaeological history. All of this could be jeopardized by the proposed wind farm.

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Above and below: the Roccaccia of Montevitozzo, a medieval fortress dating back to at least the 12th century. Image courtesy Luca Nejrotti

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The “la Biagiola” archaeological site, located within the Sorano/Sovana area. Image courtesy Luca Nejrotti.

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Why has this area been targeted for such large-scale energy projects? The reasons are logistical, not environmental. Border zones in Italy typically face fewer restrictions, making them attractive. Furthermore, this region is located along the route of the yet-to-be-built Hyper Grid, a high-voltage cable network that will transport renewable energy from Sardinia to northern Italy and central Europe. Its Central Link, which will pass through our area, will significantly reduce energy transport costs. However, the energy generated will not be used locally. Rather, following an outdated development model, it will be distributed over long distances, benefiting distant areas with no direct benefit to the local community.

None of these energy projects include compensation for the disruption caused to local populations, let alone financial restitution for the use of the land, once a standard practice. Today, in the name of the public good and the energy crisis, land is expropriated at below-market rates, (only for the areas set to be built, even though the whole land will no longer be usable).

The long-term damage, however, goes beyond economic loss. It risks undermining the sustainable development models that have been painstakingly established in this region, models focused on sustainable tourism, agriculture, pastoralism, collective well-being, solidarity, and respect for the environment. Transforming this area into a major energy hub would nullify these efforts and disregard the local community’s values and needs.

Finally, these regions are already producing more renewable energy than is required by European targets, further raising the question: why destroy this unique landscape and heritage for a project that offers no return to those who call it home?

The history of these places and landscapes reflects a delicate balance between humans, the environment, and resources, a balance that has been shaped over millennia through great sacrifices. From an archaeologist’s perspective, we must seek development models that preserve this fragile equilibrium, learning from the past while addressing the potential and challenges of the future.

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Culture is central to defining humanity. Throughout history, many definitions have been proposed to describe what we mean when we talk about culture, leading to considerable confusion.

The word “culture” was once reserved to designate the customs and behaviors of particular groups of people in specific regions and timeframes. In recent years, however, definitions concerning what is and what is not culture have widened considerably, to the point where “culture” is now used to describe the behaviors of numerous life forms. For example, it has become common to refer to culture when describing the social structures of sperm whales and other animals, including insects.

But while animal culture denotes behaviors that are learned and socially transmitted, human cultural practices go further, transforming these behaviors into coded systems that are reproduced within specific group settings. This explains the emergence of tradition—a key element of culture that seems exclusive to humans. Traditions provide abstract mechanisms through which humans symbolically assimilate the concept of identity over time.

This deeply symbolic derivation is only observed in humans. Human societies imbue culture with a network of meanings that can be shared and understood symbolically by individuals belonging to a particular social structure (family, tribe, community, and nation). The further we go back in time, the more difficult it becomes to reestablish the abstract (contingent) connections that once linked these symbols to their meanings.

Over time, human culture has not only included the concrete manifestations of extrasomatic survival strategies but also encompassed abstract notions that are barely perceptible in archaeological records.

The emergence of stone tools more than 3 million years ago marks the birth of culture in the human lineage. When the first Homo habilis remains were discovered at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, in the early 1960s, its name, which means handyman, was based on the idea that this hominin was the first toolmaker. This justified its placement at the root of the human family tree: the first species of the genus Homo.

However, this anthropocentric denomination proved to be short-lived. As early as the 1970s, the probability that other genuses, like Australopithecines and Paranthropus, were also making tools, came to light in some archeological records. This likelihood continues to be supported by new data, including discoveries of sites yielding stone tools that predate the emergence of H. habilis.

Because they were systematically made using techniques that had to be learned and shared communally, these activities meet the standard definition of culture used by cultural anthropologists. Furthermore, the repetitive technologies employed to make stone tools are defined as traditions, adding further weight toward culture. From this stage forward, for a period spanning almost the entire evolutionary trajectory of our genus (some 2.8 million years), stone toolkits provide virtually the only material evidence that catalogs successive phases of human cultural evolution leading to the present.

Ancient stone tools are essential for tracking cultures and their interactions. In studying them, we can see how culture evolves on uneven pathways on a cumulative trajectory. As human societies grew and sharpened their technological capacity, their cultural repertoire expanded, a process characterized not only by the empirical remains of their material culture but also by increasingly elaborate symbolic behaviors that—we logically infer—mirror the emergence of human consciousness.

The complex interplay of inter- and intra-human population exchanges and the capacity for learning, along with curiosity and inventiveness, have combined through time to create our species’ current state. Despite the fragmentary nature of archeological records, studying ancient stone toolkits brings to light precious information allowing us to recognize culture in the deep past. Lithic specialists, for example, identify and describe the specific stylistic traits and chains of production in the toolkits, permitting scientific inferences that contribute to the knowledge about our cognitive evolution.

Archaeologists combine “cultural” data with fossil genomics to track and compare hominin lineages and reconstruct the 2.8 million-year-old story of our genus. They are seeing a braided account of populations distinguished by their cultural manifestations and divided into groups with divergent species across continents. Today, however, with only one species of Homo remaining on the planet (H. sapiens), the supposed intra-human differences no longer have any biological foundation and have been laid bare for what they are: purely symbolic cultural constructions.

Parallels are drawn to compare human expressions of culture and analogous behaviors in other life forms. This is demonstrated in primate studies and has often been recognized in the pioneering work of Jane Goodall in Gombe National Park, Tanzania, during the 1960s, when she observed wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) modifying branches and using them as tools to probe for termites in termite mounds. Some believe these observations could serve as a template for early hominin toolmaking behavior, a hypothesis supported by the close genetic proximity of chimpanzees to humans and their apparent physical similarities. Primate toolmaking capacity continues to be explored in the wild and in captivity, yielding probing results.

Interestingly, other animals, such as crows, practice surprisingly similar behaviors, also modifying leaves to probe into crevices to retrieve insects, and even inventing compound tools. These “crow tools” are uncannily similar to those made by chimpanzees; the manufacturing processes, aims, and outcomes are also comparable.

Undoubtedly, there is a considerable gap separating the degree to which humans have developed material and immaterial cultures and the behaviors we observe in other animals. Through time, only humans have developed toolmaking into a fundamental adaptive strategy resulting in the techno-dependent species we have become. More importantly, only humans imbue their manufactured objects and behaviors with symbolically relevant identitarian meaning.

Language is a central pillar in any discussion about human culture and its origins; its emergence has been linked to the evolution of stone tool technologies. As early Homo reaped the benefits of their toolmaking capacity, they also increased their ability to compete with other animals for resources and these advantages gave them more free time to develop innovative ways to expand their benefits. Through time, successive hominin ancestors invented new and increasingly complex toolkits, requiring individuals to spend more time learning to make them. This process eventually came to depend on vocal communication strategies.

Paleoanthropologists have demonstrated that the cerebral and anatomical configurations necessary for spoken language could have resulted from changes in craniofacial features occurring over millions of years, as early hominins adapted to upright stature and bipedal locomotion. As hominins came to rely on specific kinds of stone tools, the conditions that made language physically possible also led to its selection and development as an advantageous adaptive culture-sharing strategy.

When we think about what is unique about human culture, we often consider technology as central to characterizing civilizations. Technologies have evolved over time to synchronize culture in a way that assimilates individuals into discrete (but potentially huge) collaborative social units; in doing so, it plays a vital role in the mental construction of both personal and shared identities.

Sharing culture and technological know-how creates a common sense of time. Museums, historical sites, and fictional history present the past through symbols of progress or failure and thus serve to chart a shared timeline. Although archaeological records correspond to a series of sequential stages—advancing our species through a process of “progress”—there is no inherent hierarchy to these developments, either at the biological or the cultural levels.

For those educated within a cultural framework that explains prehistory as a linear and codependent set of chronological milestones—whose successive stages are understood by conjured logical systems of cause and effect—this outlook is going to take time to be accepted. It takes an intellectual leap to reject such hierarchical constructions of prehistory and to perceive the past as a system of nonsynchronous events closely tied to the shifting ecological and biological phenomena.

This endeavor, however, allows people to recognize and use the lessons offered by the past. Notably, the fact that complexity of modern human culture results from baseline learning processes bolstered through time by biosocial adaptations.

The long-term processes involved in human techno-selection have been compared to Darwinian natural selection: like biological evolution, technosocial innovations can emerge and persist, or remain latent in the human repertory. When specific conditions arise, they can be selected and, if successful, be developed into defining aspects of the human condition.

At each stage of evolution, latent technological capacities exist within the structure of cultural variability; in different regions or time frames, they are selected, used, and refined, leading human groups to choose divergent evolutionary pathways. Refining these skills can even trigger technological revolutions; when the changes lead to positive results, they can set off wider cultural transformations in the populations that use them.

Culture evolves along diachronic trends. Distinct evolutionary stages occur (or not) in different areas of the world, sometimes in very divergent chronological frameworks. Humans have learned to adapt to rapid cumulative technological change by developing complex social behaviors as an adaptive response that favors the survival of our species. This process may have started gradually, but with the accumulation of breakthroughs, it continues in leaps and bounds into the present day.

Triggering a social response that could evolve in parallel to technological progress resulted in the emergence and sharpening of cultural traditions and identities, spring-boarding our genus toward exponential increases in social complexity. The archaeological records and our own intuitive cerebral processes preserve the memory of our acquired anatomical and cultural developments. They are two sides of the same coin that evolved throughout human prehistory and beyond.

Like other primates, humans are social animals, and as individuals, we need to learn, imitate, and emulate “acceptable” behaviors within specific contexts. Culture represents the set of norms transmitted from generation to generation and dictates how individuals must behave to maintain social balance. Humanity shares and exchanges culture, but over time, we have also learned to exploit the constructed sets of cultural norms that define the social unit we belong to and justify the exclusion of people living in less favorable situations. Humanity uses culture to invent differences between people with identical biological makeup, needs, and desires.

We have an increasingly useful 7-million-year-old global data set to better understand ourselves and how to survive and improve our well-being. With time, it will be increasingly recognized that using this information as a reference and planning tool is advantageous for practically every endeavor.

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This article was produced by Human Bridges.

Cover Image, Top Left: Stone Age Culture. Franz26, Pixabay

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There is a great deal of attention in modern societies to inequality and the social problems it causes. Often inequality is considered to be the unavoidable consequence of how society operates in many cultures, with large population numbers and competition for resources requiring a hierarchy of successful and less-successful individuals. While our globalized world may seem dominated by this kind of society, there remain groups around the world who even today live very differently, despite continual and sometimes inescapable pressure. Anthropologists, whose science is the study of humans, have been fascinated by the diversity of ways our species have found to exist, and never more so than when confronted with cultures whose ethos and way of being are radically different from the urban societies that dominate our world: where words are weapons that actually win; where showing off your skills will get you mocked, and where every aspect of life is carefully organized so that no one person should ever have any more power than anyone else.

How do some people come to live in a group that has no one at the top, telling the rest what to do? Anthropologists call societies that do not have ranks egalitarian, which means that everyone in them is equal to everyone else. This is a form of social organization that is almost exclusively seen in groups of people who are not settled in one place, tied to one type of food or resource. Rather, they spend quite a lot of their time in small groups, moving around as suits their needs. These kinds of groups have been called hunter-gatherers, but a more accurate name might be foragers: they make their living by walking through their world and exploiting what comes to hand. More than a century of research into the groups who follow their food through the landscape, and do not tie themselves to one location or one crop, has built up a picture of societies that choose to organize themselves very differently from nation-states and kingdoms, and, most importantly, actively refuse to allow any sort of rank among themselves.

For a long time, there was an assumption that egalitarian societies were egalitarian simply because they were… simple. Living in small groups and moving constantly, they just couldn’t build up mountains of wealth to wield power over other people. And with very small numbers of people in a group—say no more than a few dozen—anthropologists theorized that it couldn’t be that complicated to run a society, so you wouldn’t need a chief or a king making big decisions. As archaeology has revealed the shape of our distant human past, it is clear that before about 15,000 years ago, every human on earth lived the same mobile lifestyle. Living with only what you can carry and constantly on the move would seem very taxing to the armchair academic of the previous century. The rather impolite implication then is that modern human societies who chose to live in these mobile, egalitarian societies, were simply the last vestiges of a primitive form of human social organization—people who hadn’t ‘evolved’ civilization.

It is actually quite remarkable that this idea that an equal society was an easy thing to maintain hung around for so long. One of the problems may have been that the groups who lived these mobile lifestyles were often in the process of being colonized and controlled when anthropologists arrived to study them, and so were in the middle of considerable social upheaval. But another problem may simply have been a failure of imagination. There was considerable shock when anthropologists like James Woodburn began to conduct fieldwork by actually learning the language of the group they were studying and going to observe and ask questions of the people themselves about how life worked in a small foraging group. His work with the Hadza people of what is now Tanzania set in motion a train of research that pointed out that life in a small group is anything but simple. Tempers flare, relationships break down, and when you depend on your group for survival, any social unrest could have fatal consequences.

Groups from around the world who maintain an egalitarian ethos have shown that rather than being too simple to ‘invent’ rank, they are instead too complex to allow one person or group of people to simply take charge. Keeping everyone in a group on equal footing requires a huge amount of effort, and has to be constantly maintained. The Ju/’hoansi people of southern Africa reckon it is particularly important to ‘cool young men’s hearts’; to stop them being prideful and boastful if they display some special skill, everyone agrees it’s very important to bring them back down to earth. A hunter is never allowed to distribute his own meat; instead, the distribution is done in public, with everyone watching. Among the Ju/’hoansi, the proper etiquette is to gently mock a successful hunter—for instance telling them the giraffe that they have killed and will be feeding several camps for days was actually a bit scrawny, perhaps.

Mockery seems to be one of the most critical tools in the political inventory for groups that actively try to achieve equality. Jerome Lewis, an anthropologist who lived with the Mbendjele of Northern Congo for several years, tells how poor behavior is subtly (or not so subtly) corrected by women who act out whatever foolish or misguided thing someone has done. The improvisational theater always has an appreciative audience, and all of the group will laugh resoundingly at the person who has done something wrong. What might seem a recipe for social disaster in a group that must get along in order to survive is anything but; the mockery only ends when the person who is being made fun of eventually gives up and laughs along with the rest of the group.

We can now see that in those groups that refuse to have ranks among themselves, there are many ways that equality can be actively maintained, but they are almost entirely social. Many groups have a policy similar to that of the Ju/’hoansi when it comes to sharing meat or indeed, anything else that is in the camp—that it would be the height of rudeness not to. Those who transgress against the rules of society may have to face their whole society laughing at them. Even when and where groups choose to move is determined partly by social concerns. If you live in a small group, it is very important to stay connected to friends and family who live somewhere else, in case, for instance, you decide you just can’t stand who you are living with at the moment. It seems that the last human societies on earth to live the mobile lifestyles that our species maintained for hundreds of thousands of years do so largely as equals—but equals who must be very careful to stay that way.

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Cover Image, Top Left: Hadza hunter-gatherers. kiwiexplorer, CC BY-SA 2.0

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In thousands of ways, we are taught to accept the world we live in as the only possible one, but thousands of other ways of organizing homes, cities, schools, societies, economies, and cosmologies have existed and could exist.

We started a project called Made Differently: designed to play with the possibility and to overcome the suspicion—instilled in us every day—that life is limited, miserable, and boring.

Our first focus is Cities Made Differently, exploring different ways of living together. Read and imagine four different kinds of cities taken from our book which are listed below, and continue your exploration, downloadable at a4kids.org, for drawing and dreaming.

City of Greed

What if you had to live in a city whose citizens must pay not only for housing and health care but also for the air they breathe?

The dystopian novel The Air Merchant takes place in a secret underground factory city. Mr. Bailey, the factory owner, condenses air from the atmosphere and sells it to his fellow citizens for a profit. Eventually, the Earth’s atmosphere thins, creating a catastrophic shortage of breathable air. With the price of air increasing, fewer and fewer humans can afford to keep breathing.

When people can’t pay for the air they breathe, the police throw them out of the city. Everyone lives in constant fear of suffocating, thinking only of how to earn enough money to spare their loved ones and themselves that terrible fate. The food company Nestlé is often criticized for its irresponsible use of water in India, Pakistan, and other developing countries. Captured in the documentary film We Feed the World (2005), former Nestlé chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe said:

“It’s a question of whether we should privatize the normal water supply for the population. And there are two different opinions on the matter… NGOs, who bang on about declaring water a public right… That’s an extreme solution. The other view says that water is a foodstuff like any other, and like any other foodstuff, it should have a market value. Personally, I believe it’s better to give a foodstuff a value so that we’re all aware it has its price…”

City as a Family

Imagine a city without any strangers, where everything is shared, and everyone looks after each other. There are no shops, no money, and no danger at all.

We think of the family as a group that practices “basic communism”: from each according to his ability to each according to his needs. Any family is thought to be protected by bonds of kinship from the cruel laws of the outside world. Unlike businesses, rarely will a family throw out a sick child or an elderly parent because they are no longer “revenue-generating assets.”

According to Roman law, which still underlies the value system of Western societies, a family was all those people living within the household of a paterfamilias or father whose authority over them was recognized as absolute. Under the protection of her father, a woman might be spared abuse from her husband, but their children, slaves, and other dependents were his to do with as he wanted.

According to early Roman law, a father was fully within his rights to whip, torture, or sell them. A father could even execute his children, provided that he found them to have committed capital crimes. With his slaves, he didn’t even need that excuse.

The patriarchal family is also the model for authoritarianism. In ancient Rome, the patriarch had the right to treat his household members as property rather than as equal human beings.

The Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that humankind originally lived in small bands of hunter-gatherers composed of close friends and relatives until big cities and agriculture emerged, and with them wars, greed, and exploitation.

However, archaeology shows us numerous examples of how people in different times and across different parts of the Earth lived in large metropolitan areas while managing their collective affairs on a fairly egalitarian basis. At the same time, there have always been small communities where status inequality prevailed and a privileged minority at the top benefited by exploiting the rest.

We know from our personal experience that in almost every family there are elements of both authoritarianism and baseline communism. This contradiction never fully goes away but different cultures handle it differently.

A City оf Runners

The people who live in this city believe that real life is all about constant competition.

The people in a city of runners find it fascinating or even necessary to keep track of who among them is more important, who is richer, smarter, more beautiful, or more worthy. There are many ideas about how the city came to have habits like this.

One of the city’s revered philosophers, Thomas Hobbes, believed that the natural state of human beings is to seek violent domination over their neighbors, and that society without the authority of the sovereign would quickly turn into a battle of all against all. Constant competition between people is thus seen as an enjoyable game as compared to real war, which is always lurking around the corner.

Naturally, in cities like this, there must be some who are poor, ugly, and unhappy. Just as in some children’s games, there are winners and losers.

People living in the city of runners foster an admiration for winning in their kids, and an ambition to surpass their peers in all areas. Children in the city of runners have no interest in learning together, sharing, or mutual aid. Helping someone pass an exam is considered “cheating” and is strictly punished. All their lives, adults are engaged in constant competition over beauty, skill, and wealth.

Runners believe that people who live differently from them and who refuse to play their games simply choose to be losers. During the 1968 student unrest in Western countries, some disaffected young people abandoned the big cities for the “sleepy” provinces where they created autonomous settlements, many of which still exist today.

Underground City

Living in an underground city could be safe and convenient. Without weather, there’s no risk of storms. And no trees mean no forest fires.

Underground cities have been around practically forever. The city of Derinkuyu in the Turkish province of Cappadocia, for example, was built between 2000 and 1000 BCE. The landscape of volcanic tuff—a unique soft stone—could be hollowed out without requiring complex tools, making room to house 20,000 people. The underground city boasted a stable, corrals, churches, schools, canteens, bakeries, barns, wine cellars, and workshops. The intricate system of tunnels connecting it all together meant that intruders would not know their way around and quickly get lost.

Tunnels are found underneath many cities. Rome is famous for its catacombs, and at one time subterranean burial chambers were commonplace. These days, tunnels tend to be for underground trains called subways. In Beijing, the residents became so fearful of nuclear war that they built an entire bunker city, with 30 kilometers of tunnels connecting underground houses, schools, hospitals, shops, libraries, theaters, and factories. There’s even an underground roller skating rink!

Mexico City has not gone as far as to build an entire city underground, but architect Esteban Suarez is planning an underground apartment building. And what a building it will be! Piercing the center of the Mexican capital with its tip will be a 65-story pyramid—no wonder they call it the earthscraper. The glass-enclosed area above the surface will be for recreation and outdoor concerts.

Underground, the building will be heated and powered with geothermal energy, making the pyramid energy self-sufficient. It’s not easy building downward into the earth, but building underground won’t disrupt the historical landscape of the city. And it evades the city’s building codes restricting the height of structures to eight floors.

Mirny, a town in the Russian far north, has its eye on an abandoned diamond mine as the site for an underground city. There are no more diamonds to be found, but its abandonment threatens neighboring villages with cave-ins and landslides. Moscow architect Nikolai Lyutomsky has proposed a solution: building a strong concrete skeleton inside the quarry to strengthen its walls while covering its top with a transparent dome, resulting in an underground eco-city fit for 10,000 people.

Located in the Yakutia Republic, the town has a harsh arctic climate with temperatures reaching as low as -60 degrees Celsius in the winter. But underground, the temperature never falls below zero. The quarry would thus be good for both people and plants. Its architects have allocated most of the city’s inner space to vertical farms. Farms for food production, technical laboratories, factories, and research centers are located underground and, aboveground, there will be play centers and schools. Moving between the underground and the surface is quick and easy.

Going underground to avoid possible misfortunes—might seem like a good idea, but there’s a catch: if you don’t like the rules of your community it’s tough to get out. How important is it to be able to easily leave one community, whose rules no longer suit you, and join a different one?

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This excerpt is adapted from Nika Dubrovsky and David Graeber’s Cities Made Differently (MIT Press, 2024, all rights reserved) and is distributed in partnership with Human Bridges.

Source: MIT Press

Cover Image, Top Left: City Window. Barbaracascao, Pixabay

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The human capacity for invention is unparalleled. We have developed technologies that have allowed us to survive and thrive far beyond the ecological niches that constrained our ancestors. While our innovation has allowed us to break loose from the constraints of our home continent, Africa, and even our home planet, the actual way in which our species adopts new technologies remains a subject of huge debate among those scientists who study the past. Does one hominid ancestor start to shuffle upright, and the rest follow? Does the first human to loop a piece of string through a shell bead inspire the rest of the species to create the world’s first jewelry? Or do different animals take up the same new adaptation at different times, because it solves a problem that appears in many places?

We know that in some of our closest living relatives, the primates, new technical skills are passed on through direct learning. Macaques, in particular, are responsible for innovative behaviors that have been transmitted through their societies by individuals who have seen and observed them and then adopted them as their own. This is true of behaviors as varied as “hot tubbing” by the macaques of Japan’s northern Hokkaido island and the habit of dipping sweet potatoes in the sea to “salt” them developed by macaques on Koshima island further south.

Many of the technological innovations that have had the greatest impact on our species were first seen about 10,000 to 15,000 years ago in a region that archaeologists refer to as the “Fertile Crescent.” The region encompasses a swathe of land crossing the countries between the easternmost Mediterranean Sea and the Sinai, Arab, and Syrian deserts and up into the Zagros Mountains of what is now Iran. It is a region of famous firsts in terms of radical changes to our species lifestyle: settling down, cultivating plants, and taming the animals we eat are all first attested in this strip of relatively abundant land.

It was along the shores of the Sea of Galilee where we have the first evidence of the wild ancestors of today’s wheat being exploited more than 20,000 years ago, at the site of Ohalo II, reconstructed from the microscopic remains of shattered seeds still clinging to a grinding stone after millennia. From 15,000 years ago, in a corridor stretching up and down the eastern Mediterranean we call the Levant, there comes the first signs of a new way of life for humans; one that involves staying in the same groups and homes all year round, rather than following food around the landscape as we had done for the 300,000 years prior. Those seeds from Ohalo II have grown into entirely new shapes by the time they are uncovered in these new inventions, called villages, and by around 9,000 years ago this new human-friendly type of wheat was well on its way to becoming our first domesticate (domesticate that wasn’t a dog—those we have had for probably 30,000 years). Meanwhile, over the last 10,000 years or so, goats, sheep, pigs, and eventually cattle were all brought into these new human habitations, and bred into the shapes that suit us rather than them: better to eat or easier to manage.

What is even more remarkable about these radical changes in a species that had been living as foragers for hundreds of thousands of years was how fast these new innovations “spread.” Archaeologists in the 20th century dedicated huge amounts of time to tracking the movements of new technologies through the evidence of ancient houses, pots, and bones to work out how people from the Near East had “invaded” Europe with their culture of domestication, and even when the idea of a mass invasion was put to rest, some still claimed that people themselves carried the new ideas of domesticated life. The way we saw human inventions was as hot-tubbing macaques at a larger scale: one clever inventor and her friends and family following behind.

This has large implications for human knowledge. Did it take people literally passing on new skills to spread farming, domestic animals, and year-round lifestyles to all corners of the globe? Is this the only way our species learns something this life-changing?

We are not, as it turns out, macaques. Good scientific evidence has given us dates for a farming and animal revolution in China that happened just a thousand or so years later, but for a totally different crop: rice. The invention of cultivated plants occurred independently, as did other similar innovations like domesticating animals. In fact, around the world, there was an endless series of radical revolutions, some earlier, some later, but all bringing plant and animal life under human management: from the potato and the alpaca in South America to pearl millet and cattle in West Africa.

This phenomenon is called “independent invention,” and it is our strongest evidence yet that every innovation our species has made has been a response to a place and time; that some technologies travel far and wide but, where they don’t, we are perfectly capable of inventing them again.

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This article was produced by Human Bridges.

Cover Image, Top Left: Wheat, Bru-nO, Pixabay

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