Economic inequality appears to have been rare and transient among humans during the Neolithic period (that is, from about 11,000 to 5,000 years ago). But in the following period, economic inequality became common and widespread. Why? Samuel Bowles and Mattia Fochesato tackle this question in “The Origins of Enduring Economic Inequality” (Journal of Economic Literature, December 2024, 62(4), pp. 1475–1537). From their abstract:
We survey archaeological evidence suggesting that among hunter- gatherers and farmers in Neolithic western Eurasia (11,700 to 5,300 years ago) elevated levels of wealth inequality occurred but were ephemeral and rare compared to the substantial enduring inequalities of the past five millennia. In response, we seek to understand not the de novo “creation of inequality” but instead the processes by which substantial wealth differences could persist over long periods and why this occurred only at the end of the Neolithic, at least four millennia after the agricultural revolution. Archaeological and anthropological evidence suggests that a culture of aggressive egalitarianism may have thwarted the emergence of enduring wealth inequality until the Late Neolithic, when new farming technologies raised the value of material wealth relative to labor and a concentration of elite power in early proto-states (and eventually the exploitation of enslaved labor) provided the political and economic conditions for heightened wealth inequalities to endure.
If you are like me, the first obvious question is what archeological evidence is available on this question. The authors write: “estimates are based on the size of dwellings, the size of storage areas (where these can be identified), land ownership, and the value of goods buried with the dead.” The author are quick to acknowledge the limitations of this data, but also quick to point out that the data is growing and expanding rapidly.
A key element in their question is a shift in agricultural technology, hoe-based agriculture to ox-drawn plows. They argue that the “agricultural revolution”–that is, the shift from hunter-gatherers to agricultural communities that remained geographically stable and raised crops–occurred at a time of hoe-based agriculture. The dynamics of production in these economies, as well as the social norms, were strongly egalitarian. But the arrival of the ox-drawn plow, shifted the dynamics. They write:
Recent research in paleobotany by Amy Bogaard and her colleagues … provides a key piece of our proposed resolution of the above puzzles: Developments in farming technology providing novel opportunities for accumulating wealth that differentially favored those with more initial wealth. These innovations— especially ox-drawn plows—raised the value of land, draft animals, and other forms of material wealth relative to labor, which in turn were associated with important demographic, cultural, and institutional changes. The ox-drawn plow transformed what had previously been a land-abundant and labor-limited economy to one in which material wealth was scarce relative to labor. The result was to generalize to any locale suitable for plow-based farming the previously rare and often ephemeral ecological conditions for the emergence of substantial wealth inequality. We then draw on recent ethnographic evidence to suggest that or proposed explanation extends beyond the plow- versus hoe-based farming distinction to any innovation—such as irrigation and the domestication of long lived animals—that enhances the value of land and other forms of material of wealth in their importance in securing a household’s livelihood.
While this technological shift generated conditions for greater inequality, it was then reinforced by political shifts, including slavery.
But the substantial wealth inequality that resulted from this process at a few Late Neolithic and Bronze Age sites might have been short lived (like their Early Neolithic antecedents) but for a subsequent process of political centralization that complemented the growing wealth inequalities, resulting in the emergence of what we will below define as the first archaic proto-states in Mesopotamia. Two subsequent institutional developments … brought enduring wealth inequalities up to and in some cases above modern levels. The first was the continuing process of state formation, by which a unified elite more effectively monopolized the use of coercion, the first examples in our dataset being observations from the Roman Empire in the first centuries of the Common Era. The second was the imposition of slavery, converting free labor to a form of material wealth that could be owned by wealthy households, accumulated, and transmitted over generations.
There is a lot to chew over here. Notice the claim several thousand years ago, “enduring wealth inequalities” were “up to and in some cases above modern levels.” Notice that these are inequalities of wealth, not income (although societies with a large proportion of slaves seem virtually certain to have high inequality of income, as well). Notice the role of technology: as Bowles has said in another context, “the ox-drawn plow was the robot of the late Neolithic early bronze age because it displaced labor and it made land scarce and it made labor abundant.” Notice how the question of whether labor is “scarce” or “abundant” changes over time. Notice how political and social institutions can serve to reinforce or higher wealth inequality, by affecting the ways in which wealth can be created and inherited (and in particular, whether humans can be turned into “wealth” via slavery).
The Neolithic era is sometimes called the “New Stone Age” or a time of “pre-history.” The Bronze Age which follows involves a separation between rural and urban, the development of cities, written records, and a rise in wealth inequality to modern levels. Even before the Iron Age starts roughly around 1,000 BCE, roots of modernity were being established.
